As an aside I have a dozen tuning fork watches humming along. Eleven are Bulova Accutrons with the 218 movement and one Omega f300. I use the Energizer 344 battery in all of them with no problem (the 214 Accutrons can be touchier with the 1.5 volt battery).

Regards

Gary

I have seen some on yahoo.jp auctions over the last 6-12 month. but they are very rare. i think i seen maybe 3-4 total.

he does not wear the watch nowdays, i have tried to get it cleaned up, replace battery but he wouldn’t listen. i do not have pictures and he is out of my reach for 3 month; however when we talk on the phone i will ask him ig he left it at the house and if so, i’ll go and snap few pics.

from what i remember, the watch looks exactly the same style as one you pictured. just a bit different hands and different color of the dial

i remember, back in early 90’s, he used to heat the back a little to open the screw. he said that the screw kinda snapped into place after, so it had to be heated to open. i can only guess that the screw is made so that u would not need to open the hole case and that the battery can be replaced by anyone.

regarding of what he did, drop me an email

That must have been quite an experience for your stepfather, traveling to Japan on business in the mid-’70s. If you don’t mind my asking, what business was he in?

I’ve never heard of a Type II with a battery hatch, although I know models from when your stepfather was in Japan, like the Quartz Superior, Crown Quartz, and King Quartz used 48xx stream quartz movements with those casebacks. If you do happen to take some pictures of his watch, I’d be interested to see them.

Regards,

Bryan

Very cool article! My stepfather was in Japan a few times in the 70’s for business. He was there last in 1976 and he bought a type II seiko. it is a bit different than yours though. For one, it has a screw in the back(i have since seen some of the watches on auctions have them, but they are quite rare). I cannot remember how long his battery was but i do have full model info written down

which is: 4622-8000 and dates to august 1976

i do not have pictures of it though:(

the screw looks like this (from scwf archive)

http://www.larrybiggs.net/scwf/index.php?mod=103&action=1&id=1160924232

thanx for the article:)

Good stuff, thanks for sharing!

Regards,

Bryan

You will be surprised when you will read this: typical accuracy of a Tuning Fork watch was close to +/- 1 s per day, that means much better than much of mechanical watches, and close to “standard” quartz accuracy (+/- 20 s or +/- 15 s per month).

Some models, like Omega f300 or Omega Megasonic were even COSC certified chronometers!

I have written accuracy “was” close to +/-1 s per day. Effectively, it is very hard today to find watchmakers able to repair or to adjust tuning fork watches. Bulova has stopped any support and just proposes to replace the movement by a quartz one.

Moreover, the use of silver oxide batteries instead of mercury ones induce a downgrade of accuracy, because the voltage is higher. Sometimes the “phasing” of the watch can be adjusted. Other solutions include changing a coil in the watch (in order to have the same voltage as with original batteries), or use “Accucells”, which are modified batteries (with the add of a resistor) giving the same voltage as original mercury ones (with the caveat of the need to change battery every 10 months instead of every year).

This said, if you wanted a tuning fork watch, the best way, imho, would be to buy a NOS one and use accucell batteries. Sometimes, NOS f300, Accutron or Hisonic are proposed on eBay…

With a +/- 1 s intrinsic accuracy, with a “sixties” design, and taking into account improvements in nano-mechanics and microelectronics, one could expect that 21st century designed tuning fork watches could compete with quartz! (Note that quartz functionment is close to the one of a tuning fork! Simply, vibrations are counted by a microcircuit instead of being changed in rotational movement).

Best Regards,

MikeNovember

Yes, I was also surprised (and pleased) to learn the 7546 movement uses a 5-year battery. In fact, it was the first 5-year-battery-powered watch Seiko released (along with the one in the 7903, also released in 1977).

You mentioned the 8F caliber; I’m a big fan of the 8J caliber movement, btw. I’ve owned two Seiko watches with that movement. One of them kept time to +/-4 seconds per year the first year I owned it. I don’t recall exactly how it performed the second, only that it didn’t do quite as well (but still was accurate — around spec, I think).

Our pleasure to include a link to your website in our blog roll. Thanks again for including ours in yours.

Regards,

Bryan

Your comments are interesting; one thing you reminded me of was the SeikoThermetic — I haven’t thought about it for a long time. Also, your mention of Seiko Solar technology. It’s another piece of the puzzle.

I think it would be cool to hear a Tuning Fork movement “hum.” I’m curious, do you happen to know what the specs are on Tuning Fork movements. Do they run, like +/- 60 seconds per day?

Thanks again for your interesting comments!

Regards,

Bryan

It’s amazing to find out that the Type II movements have a five-year battery life considering that they were designed decades ago. I’m not an expert on watch batteries and I guess either the cell that the 7546 uses have a larger capacity or the caliber itself is very frugal on battery power.

My V657 based quartz chrono is rated for 2 years on the average while the 7T32s that I own have a 3-year battery life, despite my not using the stopwatch functions. My analog-digital H023 Seikos fare 2.5 years at the most (never used the alarm function either).

Of course, Seiko’s 8F-series Perpetual Calendars are gifted with 10-year battery life only because it uses high capacity lithium cells instead of silver oxide ones.

This is an excellent article and I liked reading the piece of history about Mr Teruo Isazaki relating his problems in finding phased out mercury oxide batteries.

I wonder if Seiko has plans to revive their highly accurate, 32kHz quartz movements like the 7546 for the masses in addition to their +/- 20sec/year 8F calibers and their high end GS quartz modules.

BTW, thanks a heap for including my watch blog into GMT+9’s blogroll, I appreciate it a lot.

cheers,

Stratman.

Yes, Tuning Fork watches are “humming”, because they work at a frequency close to 300 Hz. Most of Tuning Fork watches are based on Max Hetzel patents, that he got when working with Bulova. And the Citizen Hisonic was the result of a joint venture between Bulova and Citizen (once Bulova retired from the joint venture, the branch of Citizen which was involved became “Citizen Electronics”, in 1975).

Max Hetzel also worked for Swiss industry, and he was able to re-invent Tuning Fork watches for Omega, without infringing his own former patents with Bulova! the result is the Omega megasonic, working at 720 Hz, with a less audible “humming”!

It’s a pity such a nice technology has disappeared: we still find mechanical watches (including uninteresting ones!) but no Tuning Fork ones. However, they could benefit from progresses in microelectronics and in nano-mechanics, be competitive with mechanical watches, and probably evnen with quartz ones.

Concerning Seiko and quartz technology: yes Seiko did a lot for quartz technology (it invented it; it designed high-end quartz watches either with high frequency quartz or temperature compensation; it tried to have energy self-sufficient quartz watches , with kinetic, thermic and solar energy, though lately with solar, compared to Citizen or Casio).

And then, Seiko engineers misoriented their compass and they invented SpringDrive! In short (and this is just my opinion!), SpringDrive is an hybrid technology with no sinergy between mechanics and electronics, and just the cumulated defects of both technologies (it has the maintenance needs of mechanical watches; it has the uncertainty in perenniality of quartz watches: without original parts, no repair possible; it has a limited accuracy performance, because, due to the small electrical power available, high frequency / temperature compensated quartz cannot be used).

In fact, SpringDrive is a marketing answer to today fashion for mechanical watches: it is a quartz watch disguised in a mechanical one. And this is the consequence of Seiko inability to mass produce high-end mechanical watches: if Seiko knows how to make them (see Grand Seiko or Credor mechanical watches), it doesn’t have the industrial means and skill people to manufacture them in large quantities.

Seiko had already taken this orientation (”quartz disguised in mechanical”) with 9T82 kinetic movement, which has a very complex mechanism (some ~ 40 jewels, even more than with mechanical automatic chronographs). It is the opposite of the choice done in Seiko 5M65 movement or in some Citizen Attesa ones, where there is one stepper-motor for each hand / date function, and where even the rotation of crown is transferred to hands via a stepper motor.

I think that “one motor per hand” is the good direction for the future of analog quartz technology, along with kinetic or solar source and rechargeable batteries, and along with wave control for accuracy.

Batteries, here may lay Seiko problem: Seiko is a champion of vertical integration, and wants to design / manufacture all. Since Seiko is not a batteries manufacturer, its engineers have always been reluctant to this technology:
- they used capacitors, not rechargeable batteries, in the first kinetic watches, with the known result of failing capacitors;
- they have used 6 months storage rechargeable batteries in kinetic watches from year 2000, or in solar ones; but they curiously replaced them by 1 month storage batteries in kinetic direct drive in 2007,
- and finally they are HAPPY with SpringDrive and NO BATTERY AT ALL!

Maybe, with SpringDrive, Seiko engineers finally achieved their dream of “no battery quartz watch”. But the overall result doesn’t convince me. And I don’t believe SpringDrive will kill other quartz technologies: apart from the buzz about these watches, I would be curious to know the number of SpringDrive watches that Seiko did sell, and their sales amount, as a fraction of Seiko watches sales!

Hope Seiko will re-orient soon its compass to “true” mechanical high end watches, and high end quartz ones. I am fond of both…

Best Regards,

MikeNovember

Considering what their quartz technology did to tuning fork movements, don’t you think it’s interesting how Seiko has been trying to expand watch movements beyond the quartz standard they set with Kinetic and Spring Drive movements?

Thanks for your comments. Much appreciated.

Regards,

Bryan

I think the heart of this article is the information Isozaki-san provides about the Seiko Type II basically killing off Citizen (and Bulova) Tuning Fork watches. This is apparently a famous story in Japan with people of that generation interested in watches/technology.

I agree Isozaki-san’s Web site is an great resource — lots of interesting pictures/examples of his work.

Regards,

Bryan

The Seiko Quartz Cal. 7546 movement used a battery with a 5 year life. It was rated at +/- 15 seconds a month when released, so the +/- 4 seconds per month I get (after 30 years) is performing significantly better than specs. Can’t beat that.

Thanks for adding GMT+9 to your blogroll — we are honored to reciprocate.

Thanks for taking the time to comment on this article. Much appreciated.

Regards,

Bryan

Nice bit of research on the Type II lineage there. I certainly learned a bit. It seems like interest in old 70’s era quartz is picking up so your article is very timely. Your article also is a great example of how frustrating it can sometimes be to collect Japanese wristwatches. Wading through that hobbyist site is tough on translation software and you can only understand enough of the translations to understand that there is probably some great information there. Thanks for digging into that site and grabbing that knowledge.

The repair section of that Isozaki shop is also a nice reference for collectors. He has a vast picture database with examples of his work shown. I’m very envious not only of the watches he’s had in his shop, but also because his golf handicap is just a little better than mine!

petew

Great blog post on the Type II quartz! I’m not familiar with early generation quartz Seikos other than the 4004 caliber and just vaguely remember the Twin Quartz models. It’s very interesting to view early quartz modules like the 7546 from the past.

That Type II SQ of yours is certainly beautiful to this day. What’s the average battery life for this caliber?

Thanks for putting it all together nicely for me.

-StratMan-

BTW, I’d appreciate very much if you could include my blog into your blog roll. It’s at http://quartzimodo.info and I’ve put GMT+9 in my blog roll too.

Nice story to see this competition between Citizen and its tuning fork movement opposed to Seiko and its first affordable quartz one! Hard to imagine that quartz was, at that time, very expensive (I remember my first red led quartz watch, a Texas Instrument one, I had to wait for weeks and to buy it from a TI employee to have it at a fair price!).

It’s a pity that tuning fork technology has disappeared: it was really a very nice micro-mechanical technology, with the direct transform of the vibrations of the tuning fork into rotational movement. I am sure that, with today nano-mechanics, this technology could be revived.

Just a word about batteries: most of these tuning fork watches used mercury batteries, with 1.35 V voltage. Mercury batteries are no longer manufactured, but in some cases we can still use silver oxide batteries. You will find here a replacement chart, dedicated to Bulova Accutron watches, but which could probably be used for other brands http://members.iinet.net.au/~fotoplot/accbat.html . Don’t know if it can be used for Citizen tuning fork watches, but maybe worth the trial!

Best Regards,

MikeNovember.