The day precision became a weapon
There are revolutions that arrive with fanfare, and others that become obvious, without noise, until the moment they overturn the table. At the end of the 1960s, an innovation from Japan and matured in laboratories around the world shook the most prestigious edifice of European industry: the quartz watch. More precise, simpler to produce, more robust and significantly less expensive, it attacks the very heart of the Swiss value proposition: mechanical mastery, patiently perfected for centuries.
This technological shock, which we now call the “quartz crisis”, almost marked the disappearance of know-how. And yet, it also provoked one of the most beautiful industrial and cultural renaissances of the 20th century in watchmaking: that of a Switzerland which learned to survive, then to triumph, by redefining what a quality watch is.
Before the earthquake: the golden age of Swiss mechanics
In the middle of the 20th century, Switzerland was the world reference. Manufacturers and manufacturers supply the planet with mechanical watches, from marine chronometers to elegant wrist timepieces. Precision progresses, movements are refined, reputation is consolidated. To own a Swiss watch is to belong to a certain idea of seriousness and style: a miniaturization of genius, to be worn every day.
This domination is based on an ecosystem: artisanal skills, a local supply chain, schools, a culture of complication and finishing. But it is also based, in retrospect, on a vulnerability: an industry structured around a product that is expensive to assemble, whose value is expressed through human effort and adjustment. However, quartz adapts very well to the logic of consumer electronics.
Quartz: a silent revolution, then a tidal wave
Technically, the principle is clear: a quartz crystal, subjected to a current, vibrates at a stable frequency. We count these oscillations, we convert them into impulses, and we obtain a precision which ridicules the majority of mechanical watches of the time. Where a mechanical watch can drift by several seconds per day, a quartz watch falls in the order of seconds… per month.
The symbolic date is often set at 1969, when Seiko launched the Astron 35SQ, the first commercialized quartz watch. Its price is high, but the message is clear: the future has a printed circuit. Very quickly, costs fall, production becomes industrialized, and the object becomes a modern, desirable, rational product, sometimes even futuristic in its design.
Why quartz was (almost) unbeatable
- Superior precision : more reliable on a daily basis, less sensitive to positions and shocks.
- Industrializable production : fewer manual adjustments, less highly qualified labor.
- Rapidly falling cost : Electronics follows a steep learning curve, like all technologies.
- Simplified use : no reassembly, reduced maintenance.
Faced with such a cocktail, the mechanics suddenly seem old. Not noble: old. And in a decade obsessed with the idea of progress, that’s an existential danger.
Switzerland gaining speed: when prestige is no longer enough
The irony is that Switzerland has not ignored quartz. The Watch Electronic Center (CEH) in Neuchâtel has been working on prototypes since the 1960s, and several Swiss companies are participating in the first advances. But Swiss industry is fragmented, cautious, and deeply invested in mechanics. Innovation exists, but the industrial shift is slow.
During this time, Japanese, then American and Hong Kong, players invested massively, standardized and rationalized. Quartz becomes a global commodity. And when a technology becomes a commodity, it crushes anyone who thinks they can sell it for prestige.
The consequences: industrial hemorrhage
In the 1970s and early 1980s, the Swiss watch industry suffered an immense social shock: closures, bankruptcies, forced consolidation. The figures vary depending on the sources and periods used, but the trend is indisputable: Switzerland is losing a considerable share of its watchmaking jobs and its export volumes. The world does not stop wearing watches, it stops buying Swiss watches, or only buys a minority of them.
The cultural misunderstanding: a watch is not just an instrument
Quartz has won in the field of efficiency. However, the Swiss watch has never been just a utilitarian response. It has always carried an imagination: that of the object transmitted, repaired, maintained, of a mechanism that beats like a heart. But this imagination was not sufficiently told, not sufficiently claimed, at a time when electronics were redefining the very notion of modernity.
This is where the quartz crisis becomes fascinating: it forces Switzerland to understand that its value is cultural as well as technical. That a caliber is not only a solution for measuring time, but a way of experiencing time.
The fightback: consolidation, strategy, and the brilliant idea of Swatch
The renaissance requires an industrial and strategic transformation. Faced with fragmentation, groupings are accelerating and structures are rationalizing. A name emerges as a symbol of this period: Nicolas G. Hayek, architect of a restructuring which will result in a new, more coherent power, capable of investing and defending itself.
But the most spectacular response is not a mechanical complication. It is a Swiss quartz watch… which assumes to be a pop, accessible, designer product: the Swatch, launched at the beginning of the 1980s. Plastic case, automated production, controlled cost, assertive style. Swatch does not deny quartz: it domesticates it, and transforms it into an object of desire.
Why the Swatch changes everything
- She reconciles Switzerland with quartz without denying national identity.
- She saves an industrial fabric by boosting volumes and margins in a consumer segment.
- She reintroduces the watch as a cultural accessory : a piece that we collect, that we match, that we offer.
The great return of mechanics: emotion as a counter-offensive
From the end of the 1980s and especially in the 1990s, an unexpected phenomenon took hold: mechanics became desirable again. Not because it is more precise (it is not) but because it is more expressive. Finishing, complications, brand history, workshop gestures: Swiss watchmaking is regaining control by changing the playing field. Quartz has won the battle of performance, Switzerland will win the battle of meaning.
It is also the moment when we rediscover luxury as a narrative. A watch is no longer a simple practical object, it is a language: that of elegance, of heritage, of a certain permanence in the midst of electronic obsolescence.
Two worlds, two promises
- Quartz : precision, simplicity, accessibility, pragmatism.
- The mechanics : emotion, craftsmanship, tradition, desire for longevity.
The paradox is splendid: without quartz, mechanics would perhaps never have been recognized for what it really is, not the best solution for telling time, but one of the most beautiful ways to celebrate it.
What the quartz crisis still tells us today
In the age of smartphones and connected watches, history repeats itself, in another form. Time is everywhere, free, synchronized. And yet, mechanical watches continue to seduce, precisely because they offer something else: a presence, a ritual, a material. The quartz crisis almost killed Swiss watchmaking, but it also forced it to understand its profound singularity.
Ultimately, quartz did not “destroy” Switzerland; he forced her to grow up. To distinguish the useful from the desirable, the product from the object, the performance of the soul. And this is perhaps the most contemporary lesson: in a world where technology is gaining rapidly, what lasts is often what tells the story.
