Word: quartz
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Their own engineers did not let the watchmakers down. The first quartz-based wristwatch was produced in Neuchatel in 1967, and Switzerland's chemical industry led in developing the liquid crystal displays used in many digital watches. But U.S. manufacturers got a technological lead, using miniaturization techniques largely developed for the space program, and began mass production that sent prices tumbling. Texas Instruments recently announced that it will market a digital watch for $20. Swiss watchmakers had held back, believing digital timepieces would be only...
Last year technology put pocket calculators under the Christmas tree. This year's great space-age spin-off is the digital watch. Hailed by one effusive manufacturer as "probably the greatest breakthrough in timekeeping technology since the sundial," the solid-state, quartz-crystal "time calculator" displays the time (and, on the more expensive models, the month and date) with glowing numbers, rather than hands moving around a clock face. Digitals are expected to account for at least 5% of all watches sold in the U.S. in 1975-some 2.5 million-at prices ranging from $30 to more than...
...with power is a way of fighting the absolute dominion of chance and accident, a way (he reverses Faulkner's phrase) of surviving where most people only know how to endure. Tarden blinds an armed attacker by luring him into a room used for treating photographic plates with powerful quartz lights. That man, he says, was a fool for taking so few precautions. Tarden, on the other hand, hooks his feet around the legs of chairs so they can't be pulled out from under him, looks back when he enters buildings and equips all his apartments with explosives...
...difficult under the best of circumstances. Most skippers turn to a crew member to note the precise time of their measurements, and such teamwork allows ample room for error. With no one to note the time for his sights, Oxy's skipper will rely on a specially designed quartz chronometer built into the handle of his sextant...
...devices are called quartz watches because instead of the standard balance wheel, they rely on an oscillating current in a small battery-charged quartz crystal. The current in turn powers a tiny integrated circuit, which emits pulses that regulate either standard minute and hour hands or a digital display. The watches are accurate to within a minute a year v. one to two minutes a week for standard models...