Wristwatch by Smiths Industries Limited, England, 1970-1973

Record summary

Held and catalogued by Science Museum Group, London (object number L2017-2237), this is a wristwatch by Smiths Industries Limited, made in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England, United Kingdom, Cheltenham, dated 1970-1973. The Atlas places it in the Quartz Revolution period (1969 – 1990) of its Wristwatches collection. The record is illustrated with 1 photograph.

Assembled from the source record's structured fields. Dates and attributions are given as the source states them; where a field is missing the Atlas leaves it blank rather than estimating.

Catalogue description

Atlas type guide

Quartz, digital and electronic watches

Electronic watches arrived in three steps. The Hamilton Electric 500 (1957) was the first battery-powered wristwatch, still with a balance; Bulova's Accutron (1960) used a tuning fork. On 25 December 1969 Seiko released the Astron 35SQ, the first quartz wristwatch, closely followed by the Swiss Beta 21 group. In 1972 Hamilton's Pulsar introduced the LED digital watch, and LCD displays soon made digital watches cheap.

The 'Quartz Crisis' that followed devastated the Swiss mechanical industry, which lost two-thirds of its workforce between 1970 and 1984 before recovering with the Swatch (1983) and the luxury mechanical revival. Solar, radio-controlled, kinetic and connected smartwatches continue the electronic line.

General guidance written by the Atlas editors about this kind of object. It is not a statement about this particular piece; for that, rely on the source record above and on physical examination.

Read next:Seiko calibre 35A (Astron)