Seiko File: 1969 - Seiko’s Breakout Year

1969: Seiko’s Breakout Year



When it comes to anniversaries, the once generally ignored 40 is the new 50. This year has been marked by a parade of 40th anniversary bashes: Woodstock, the moon landing, and in watches, the legendary Zenith El Primero movement. Now, with two weeks left in the year, there is still one monster anniversary to go for watch lovers. Forty years ago on December 25 the quartz watch revolution began in Tokyo when Seiko unveiled the Quartz Astron, the world’s first quartz watch. Astron was the shot heard around the watch world, beginning an upheaval that radically rearranged that world. It shifted the balance of power to the Far East, toppled Switzerland as the world’s watch production leader, sent the Swiss watch industry into a two-decade-long tailspin (between 1970 and 1988 Swiss watch employment fell from 90,000 to 28,000), brought a quantum leap in watch accuracy, a quantum change in watch styling, and much more.

http://www.watchtime.com/2009/12/1969-seikos-breakout-year/

Are you saying this is horology's Pearl Harbor?

Oops! Wrong sneak attack.

randyswagon wrote:

. . .and correct me if I'm wrong here Doc, but in 1969 Zenith only narrowly beat Seiko to the market place with the ElPrimero auto chrono movement. Is it not still widely held that Seiko had the movement first .. . . . and didn't rush it to market, only to have Zenith claim the prize over Seiko and the Heuer partnership ???

I believe that you are correct sir. The El Primero is still considered a beautiful example, but Seiko has moved on in their movement line.

. . . Ah,So . . .