Fratello On Air: Tick, Tick, Tick With Quartz Watches

I have several early Quartz watches in my collection. To my mind, they fully merit being collectible and, when chosen wisely, are far more wearable and less troublesome than mechanical pieces of the same age.
Quartz merits spending time researching the technology so that you can understand what you’re looking at and whether you may want to collect it. Mechanical watches are almost all Swiss lever, and different watches have different but relatively minor variations on that technology. This is not so with early Quartz, where some very different and unique technologies were applied, which influence their utility and collectibility.
Modern Quartz (mass produced Quartz) almost universally uses a 32khz tuning fork shaped crystal with a low power CMOS integrated circuit which performs a 2 to the power 15 division to give a once per second pulse. This is then sent to a Lavett stepper motor which makes a 180-degree turn each pulse, giving the one second tick. Some high end ones add thermal compensation as the rate of the crystal varies slightly with temperature. And Grand Seiko 9F uses two closely spaced pulses eachsecond so that the Lavett motor makes a 360 degree turn once per second. This gives higher torque and allows heavier hands to be fitted.
But early Quartz is quite different. For one, early crystals were bar shaped and vibrated at a lower frequency. And for two, low power CMOS was yet to be invented, so lesser divisions were possible, leading to the use of a Bulova-type vibrating motor in the CEH Beta 2 movement and the Longines Ultrachron, or a lower frequency crystal with a non CMOS IC in the first Seiko. Longines even achieved their Quartz without anIC at all, and used a hand- wired circuit board of absolutely tiny size- goodness knows who managed to assemble and solder that!
There were other manufacturers such as Rolex and Roamer who waited for a suitable CMOS to be developed, but then went for a mechanical train which used a technology other than Lavett. Rolex simply adapted their 3000 series Swiss lever movement, using a powered anchor to drive the escape wheel (in other words, using all the gears in the reverse direction). Roamer used similar; Omega went for a unique worm-drive solution.
Irrespective of the technology deployed, these were top end watches at the forefront of innovation, and the greatest care was taken in their design and assembly. They are beautifully made and most are readily repairable making them practical daily wearers to this day (with the exception of the Longines or the Beta-2 whose vibrating motors are nowadays temperamental.)
But what I hope I have communicated is that there is huge technical interest in early Quartz; we are talking about beautifully and expensively made watches; and many can be serviced and make practical daily wearers.
And I have only talked about technology. Given Quartz was cutting edge, manufacturers also often used cutting edge case designs to differentiate from a standard mechanical watch,and many of these are design icons nowadays- think about the Rolex Oysterquartz 17000 which is a beautiful piece of design and unique in the Rolex back catalogue.