Word: quartz
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...styles and prices. No longer. Whole new types of watches have hit the $3-billion-a-year world market in the frenzied competition to lure buyers. Some of the new models are called "automatic," meaning selfwinding; others are battery-powered and are variously called "electronic," "solid state" and "quartz crystal." Still another timekeeping development is about to reach the jewelry store. 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. The cost: about...
...Minute a Year. The hottest battle is 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...
...quartz watch is a departure from the familiar windup and "automatic" watches. Gone are the mainsprings and most of the gears and cogs that keep a watch ticking. In their place is a 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...
...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 as Motorola and Texas Instruments...
...scientific research." In practice, this means that Futan has completely dropped the traditional courses in literature and science and replaced them with such subjects as electronics and optics-and it conducts those classes in its own factories. Built and operated by the university, the factories produce equipment ranging from quartz-tungsten lamps to logic circuits for third-generation computers. The university also plans a petrochemical plant. "The purpose of these factories is to serve as a base for scientific experiments," explains Tang Chin-wen, 39, the textile-mill technician whose ardent agitprop work won him the leadership of the university...