In 1962, the Centre Electronique Horloger (CEH), consisting of around 20 Swiss watch manufacturers, was established in Neuchâtel to develop a Swiss-made quartz wristwatch, while simultaneously in Japan, Seiko was also working on an electric watch and developing quartz technology. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, both Seiko and a consortium of Switzerland's top watch firms, including Patek Philippe, Piaget and Omega, fiercely competed to develop the first quartz wristwatch. Although Bulova did not have the first battery-powered wristwatch, the Accutron was a powerful catalyst, as by that time the Swiss watch-manufacturing industry was a mature industry with a centuries-old global market and deeply entrenched patterns of manufacturing, marketing, and sales. This watch was called the Accutron and was marketed by Bulova, starting in 1960. The tuning fork resonated at precisely 360 Hz and it powered the hands of the watch through an electromechanical gear train. In 1954, Swiss engineer Max Hetzel developed an electronic wristwatch that used an electrically charged tuning fork powered by a 1.35 volt battery. Although the Lip-Elgin enterprise produced only prototypes, in 1957 the first battery-driven watch was in production, the American-made Hamilton 500. In the early 1950s a joint venture between the Elgin Watch Company in the United States and Lip of France to produce an electromechanical watch – one powered by a small battery rather than an unwinding spring – laid the groundwork for the quartz watch. Thus, prior to the 1970s, the Swiss watch industry had 50% of the world watch market. The industry prospered in the absence of any real competition.
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As a result, the Swiss watch industry enjoyed an effective monopoly. The first Swiss quartz clock, which was made after World War II (left), on display at the International Museum of Horology in La Chaux-de-Fondsĭuring World War II, Swiss neutrality permitted the watch industry to continue making consumer time-keeping apparatus, while the major nations of the world shifted timing apparatus production to timing devices for military ordnance. In general, quartz timepieces are much more accurate than mechanical timepieces, in addition to having a much lower sale price.
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The key advances included replacing the mechanical or electromechanical movement with a quartz clock movement as well as replacing analog displays with digital displays such as LED displays and later liquid-crystal displays (LCDs). The crisis started with the Astron, the world's first quartz watch, which was introduced by Seiko in December 1969. The quartz crisis took place amid the global Digital Revolution ( Third Industrial Revolution) which was gaining momentum during the late 1950s. It caused a significant decline of the Swiss watchmaking industry, which chose to remain focused on traditional mechanical watches, while the majority of the world's watch production shifted to Japanese companies such as Seiko, Citizen, and Casio which embraced the new electronic technology.
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The quartz crisis was the upheaval in the watchmaking industry caused by the advent of quartz watches in the 1970s and early 1980s, that largely replaced mechanical watches around the world. Quartz movement of the Seiko Astron, 1969