Word: bulova
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...losing ground to the Japanese, whose watches generally are of somewhat lower quality and command lower prices than the Swiss. Last year Japanese watchmakers accounted for $106 million in exports, and their sales jumped 10% in Europe and 50% in the U.S. Meanwhile, U.S. manufacturers, led by Timex and Bulova, produced 20 million watches last year, but sold only a fraction of them abroad...
...being fought over the quartz watch, which keeps time by the vibrations of a quartz crystal. It is judged to be the most accurate timepiece now on the market, losing or gaining only a minute a year, compared with one or two minutes a week for most other watches. Bulova introduced the first marketable quartz-crystal watch in 1970, but its $1,350 cost was prohibitive. Late last year Bulova brought out an improved and cheaper version, the $395 Accuquartz, believed by many to be the best quartz watch on the market. By then Timex had begun marketing a quartz...
...single tiny quartz bar that vibrates when charged by electricity from a mercury-oxide battery the size of an aspirin tablet. Ground to the proper thickness, quartz has the inherent capability of vibrating at a precise and predictable rate-32,769 times per second in the case of the Bulova Accuquartz...
Depending on the brand of watch, these vibrations control several different mechanisms that turn the hour and minute hands. Bulova uses the electronic tuning fork developed in its Accutron watch, a battery-powered model that is just a shade less accurate than the Accuquartz; Timex employs a conventional balance wheel; Benrus, the Swiss and the Japanese use a "stepdown" motor. Linking these mechanisms to the quartz crystal is an integrated electronic-circuit chip, and U.S. electronic firms are enthusiastically moving to supply the chips to the quartz watch market. Japanese, Swiss and American watchmakers are buying theirs from such firms...
...beautiful or not," quipped Arthur Okun, former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. Joseph Pechman, director of economic studies at the Brookings Institution, complained that Nixon "is providing machinery, but not yet a policy for restraining wages and prices." In the judgment of George Sheinberg, treasurer of Bulova Watch Co., the impact of the program "is going to depend almost entirely on the people whom Nixon appoints. He needs more men like Connally?people who really take hold and are effective in a short time...