The 1969 Seiko Quartz Astron, the first quartz watch to be commercialised He used this observation to create a quartz mechanism, albeit the size of a room, but with much better accuracy than offered by a mechanical watch. Back in 1927, Bell Telephone Labs engineer Warren Marrison discovered that he could achieve a constant uniform vibration by sending a charge through a quartz crystal. After all, quartz technology was born almost 100 years ago from a desire to exercise better control over chronometric functions. Accuracy and maintaining it at a constant level is what has preoccupied watchmakers’ minds for ages – and still does. Lange & Söhne with a 31-day power reserveīut non-stop functioning is just one of the aspects to consider. Autonomy isn’t the only thing that matters when comparing mechanical to quartz. Quartz battery-powered movements can run non-stop for about four years. Think Panerai Luminor GMT 10 days, Oris Big Crown ProPilot Calibre 111, or Parmigiani Kalpa Hebdomadaire. Lange & Söhne Lange 31, and a 7 to 10-day power reserve is becoming very common. In watches, hybrid is used freely to describe several creative solutions.Ĭreating such a hybrid watch is possible, but to what end? Purely mechanical watches offer an impressive power reserve of up to 50 days, like the Hublot MP-05 Ferrari, or 31, like the A. A hybrid car would rely upon an internal combustion engine and electric motors drawing power from a battery charged through regenerative braking and by the engine. In business, a hybrid would be a mix of in-office and remote work so employees have greater work-life balance and flexibility. A style combining two elements may be called a hybrid by a musician. If you are a biologist, a hybrid would mean an offspring of two animals representing different species or varieties. Hybrids entered our world in several areas, generating a fair amount of confusion about the definition. Their survival is a matter of evolution, and maybe of merging… And here comes the concept of hybrid watchmaking. However, just like the automotive world, things are changing, and the watchmaking industry has seen the arrival of new wrist-worn technologies, inventions which have nothing in common with classic watchmaking – whether we talk quartz or mechanical. If one almost killed the other, mechanical watches rose from the ashes and returned stronger than ever. Quartz and mechanical watches have learned to co-exist, but the call of nature still produces mixed offspring.
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