One of the most popular personal jewelry items on the market today is the watch. Both men and women enjoy wearing watching for both style and function purposes. Often people decide on a watch because of the look or the designer, but the technology behind your watch is what will keep you happy for years to come.

The first wind up watches date back to the 14th century, and were carried in your pocket. The same components are still used today in most watches. The following parts are used in a wind up watch:

A spring provides power
An oscillator for the time base
A numbered dial
Two hands
Gears to regulate the ticking rate for the hands on the dial

Seeking new technology for watches in the 1960s, Bulova replaced the oscillating balance wheel with a transistor oscillator. Therefore, replacing a battery for the old wind up spring. Although this new technology used a tuning fork, a more accurate method of keeping time was still being sought. Less expensive and highly accurate new technologies were introduced including: integrated circuits and LED technology. But these new technologies would require a battery small enough to fit into a watch.

Watchmakers were facing a new problem, finding a new timing element that would run on a small battery.

The quartz crystal was decided upon as the new element. Radio transmitters, receivers, and early computers had been using them for years. Even when exposed to intense heat, quartz maintains its crystalline properties, is unaffected by most solvents and very accurate. By compressing a crystal it produces an electronic charge.

A tuning fork shaped crystal is used in most modern quartz watches. Thin sheets of quartz are plated like an integrated circuit and chemically engraved to make these crystals. To keep good indifferent time depends on the initial frequency accuracy, precision of the angle of quartz cut with respect to the crystalline axis. The accuracy is also affected by the amount of contamination allowed to get through the encapsulation to and onto the surface of the crystal.

The ring of the crystal comes from the oscillation created by the electronics inside the watch amplifying internal noise. Converting this to digital circuits, by pulsation, you have the digital watch process. Digital watches are becoming increasingly popular because of their accuracy and variety in designs.

Today most of the quartz in watches has one-second pulses, which are driving a small electric motor that connects to gears to move the hands on the face. With the exception of the Rolex, who uses perpetual movement innovation, this is what gives the movement in quartz watches today.