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Re: Hodinkee Writes about "The World Watch War"

Nice spot Jeff.

Interesting to see how naive we were at the time - "Early next year Longines will begin selling a "liquid crystal digital" (LCD) watch that is battery-powered and displays the hour, minute, second and date in digits on a miniaturized TV-like screen". Yes, because of course LCDs are very much like TVs! Though I guess back then it would be like a manufacturer embedding an OLED screen into a dial would be for us now.

"There are a number of disadvantages to quartz watches...they are not shockproof...Some, like the Timex, are bulky."

Obviously still a nascent technology at the time of writing. Within a couple of years of the time of writing, most quartz watches would be robust and notably slimmer than the majority of mechanical movements. By the time Heuer was putting quartz movements into the Carrera, they were able to use the case style from the 1153 but dispense entirely with the back half of the case as the quartz movements were significantly slimmer than either the Cal 12 or the Valjoux 7733/4/6 family.

A modern TAG quartz doesn't really hold any interest for me, as I prefer the mechanical watches, but I do have a soft spot for the earlier attempts. Though Heuer were later to the party than a lot of their compatriots were. We've discussed pricing of the first quartzes in other posts, but may well be worth repeating here as it's apposite; some 6 years after this article, we see the Carrera and Verona Twins appear, with their TV-like LCD screens :), priced at exactly the same point as the equivalent automatic chrono. Even the plain, 3-hand watch versions were more expensive than a manual chronograph.

And amazing foresight at the end of the article. They are basically talking about Swatch, 10 years before Swatch happened...

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Hodinkee Writes about "The World Watch War"
Re: Hodinkee Writes about "The World Watch War"
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