Seiko, Citizen and the Battle to Make the Most Accurate Quartz Watch
Grand Seiko GMTs featuring the 9F quartz movement / Credit: Grand Seiko
Seiko, a brand recognized for its technological innovation, value for money, and, of course, the Quartz Attack. Although we usually denigrate the Quartz Attack as one of the greatest tragedies in watch history, it wasn’t a complete loss. From the ashes of the Quartz Attack rose a technology that is still prominent and seeing continuous development, even today…high accuracy quartz.
When Seiko released the Astron in 1969, it was alarming to the other watch companies that had been competing to release a quartz watch for years. One of Seiko’s main competitors at the time was Citizen, the other leading Japanese watch brand. After seeing that they had lost out to Seiko, Citizen’s management saw little value in releasing a quartz wristwatch and instead got to work on what they believed would be the evolution of the standard quartz movement. And they were right. But Citizen wasn’t the only company on the hunt, Omega had been part of a project called Beta 21 and seeing what was going on, started work on what would become the world’s first quartz chronometer, the Omega Marine Chronometer. The Marine Chronometer was released after months of testing at the Besançon Observatory and featured a Caliber 1511. Citizen, who had not at all been dormant during this time, made their foray into the high accuracy quartz market the following year, releasing the Citizen Crystron Mega. Interest in high accuracy quartz movements started to dissipate during the 1980s but was revived in the early ‘90s with the release of Grand Seiko’s 9F quartz movement. 9F quartz was developed by a team led by Kuniharu Natori and had an unprecedented accuracy of ±10 seconds per year! Nevertheless, Citizen struck back in 1995 by introducing the Caliber A660 inside the Chronomaster – a movement that had an accuracy of ±5 seconds per year!
This is just one episode in the Seiko-Citizen rivalry. Despite everything that happened as a result of the Quartz Attack, it did lead, not only to high accuracy quartz movements, like the recently released Citizen Caliber 0100, but also to Spring Drive and Kinetic - among others.