Swiss Hegemony
During World War II, Swiss neutrality permitted the watch industry to continue making consumer time keeping apparatus while the major nations of the world shifted timing apparatus production to timing devices for military ordnance. As a result, the Swiss watch industry enjoyed a well-protected monopoly. The industry prospered in the absence of any real competition. Thus, prior to the 1970s, the Swiss watch industry had 50% of the world watch market.
In 1954, Swiss engineer Max Hetzel developed an electronic wristwatch that used an electrically charged tuning fork powered by a 1.35 volt battery. The tuning fork resonated at precisely 360 Hz and it powered the hands of the watch through an electro-mechanical gear train. This watch was called the Accutron and was marketed by Bulova, starting in 1960. Bulova did not however have the first battery powered wristwatch.
In the early 1950s a joint venture between the Elgin Watch Company in the United States and Lip of France to produce an electromechanical watch – one powered by a small battery rather than an unwinding spring – laid the groundwork for the quartz watch. Although the Lip-Elgin enterprise produced only prototypes, in 1957 the first battery-driven watch in production was the American-made Hamilton 500.
Nonetheless, the Accutron was a powerful catalyst, as by that time the Swiss watch manufacturing industry was a mature industry with a centuries-old global market and deeply entrenched patterns of manufacturing, marketing and sales.
In 1962, the Centre Electronique Horloger (CEH) was established in Neuchâtel to develop a Swiss-made quartz wristwatch, while simultaneously in Japan, Seiko was also working on an electric watch and developing quartz technology.
Read more about this topic: Quartz Crisis
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