"Good news mum - we are now selling Seiko Astron!"
My mother lives on the other side of the globe, in a time zone far, far
away. For fifty or so years she was playing an active role, helping dad
run the workshop. "You should tell your subscribers that I too am a
certified watchmaker!” she said. But to be perfectly honest, I have no
recollection of her attendance to a trade course - or certification for
that matter. Yet she has spent many hours behind the workbench.
Naturally, she is very familiar with Seiko - both quartz and mechanical,
but she had never heard of Astron.
"What is an Astron? Do you have a photo?"
She wasn't impressed. “These watches look so different to the watches you already sell. Very different!"
"Don't worry mum, Astron is cool".
"Cool maybe, but who is going to buy such a strange looking watch?" she insisted.
"Anyone who has a minute to hear the Astron story, and the sophistication to understand it".
"Then tell me the story and I'll share it with dad", she said.
The Astron story
The story goes back to the 1950s; to the days when the East and West
were busy building the Iron Curtain. For the sake of national pride, and
for the sake of military dominance, the Americans and the Russians were
working hard to put rockets and satellites into the sky, and cosmonauts
into the cosmos. Meanwhile, in the Far East, the Japanese were
recovering from the lost war, working hard to rebuild from the ashes.
All three - as well as a handful of other European countries - were on a
quest for the perfect time keeping device, small enough to be strapped
on the wrist. Of course, the Swiss were already miles ahead, dominating
the world with their mechanical wrist watches. But mechanical watches
are peculiar: they only fall in one of two categories: average quality,
poor time keeper or superb quality, but still poor timekeeper. For a
simple reason: there is only so much 'accurate timekeeping juice' a
watchmaker can squeeze out of a humble, old fashioned mechanical
oscillator.
To take a wristwatch to next level of accuracy would require a
completely different type of heart: one ticking at a much higher
frequency. The frequency of a quartz crystal. Clearly, everyone in the
race knew that basic principle; but one watchmaker made it over the
finish line first.
Seiko's first quartz clock was completed in 1958. Superbly accurate, but
of the size of a fridge. Yet by the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, Seiko's
official quartz timekeeper was of the size of a typewriter. Pouring
time and resources into the project, on December 24, 1969 Seiko won the
race: on that day, 100 gold wrist watches powered by a tiny battery,
controlled by a miniature quartz oscillator, were released to the
market. At the end of 1969 no other wrist watch in the world, available
for sale, was as accurate as Seiko Quartz. The watch was able to keep
an amazingly accurate time of less than 5 seconds per month, or thirty
times better than even the best Swiss mechanical wristwatch. Despite the
price tag of Yen 450,000 - the amount of money one would pay for a
mid-range family car - one hundred watches were sold in a week.
Seiko named its first quartz watch: Astron. A star. And the star was born.
Brilliantly and generously, Seiko almost immediately released Astron's
patented documents to the world, a move that helped bring the advantages
of quartz timekeeping within the reach of all participants in the
timekeeping race. Despite this, for the next forty years Seiko continued
to dominate analogue and digital horology. The story of Astron was once
again in focus for the entire world, when in 2012, Seiko released the
new Astron - the world’s first Solar GPS watch accurate to 1 second in
100,000 years.
One second in one hundred thousand years
While the Russians were the first to put a man into the cosmos, and the
Americans the first to land man on the moon, humankind now benefited
immensely from another great space achievement. In 1973, the US
Government created and employed a network of satellites equipped with
atomic clocks. Primarily built as a military navigation aid, Global
Position Network was also partially open to scientific and civilian
users. GPS - the super accurate time source delivered from tiny "stars"
enabled us, mere mortals, the luxury of ultimate accuracy.
And once again, it was Seiko's Astron project which turned a scientific possibility into a practical, wearable analogue watch.
The challenges were numerous. Capturing a weak GPS signal from a
satellite orbiting 20,000km in space required a sophisticated receiving
and decoding system. The main physical challenge: the receiving antenna
itself- which had to be so small so as to fit inside a wrist watch case.
The computing power of the built in microprocessor should not be
underestimated either: for a watch to decode the time and determine the
wearer's location would require the acquisition of signals from not just
one, but four orbiting GPS satellites. Astron can receive and decode up
to ten satellite’s signals simultaneously. The next challenge:
translation of a digital time signal into an analogue format: Astron
displays the time by position of hands, driven by miniature
electromechanical motors. The response time of the moving hands and the
accuracy of the stepper motors are miracles of Seiko's mechanical
engineering.
The complete package
A star powered by - a star! Solar powered watches have been
around since the early 1970s and Seiko was one of the first watch
manufacturers to harness the power of light. Free energy, in abundance,
coming from a star, due to last another 5 billion years. However, our
ability to convert light into electricity efficiently is still a story
in the making. It is exciting to dream of the possibilities that lay
ahead of us. Astron is a smart, perpetual calendar timepiece, but Seiko
will not stop there! A GPS synchronized, solar powered chronograph, with
alarm function, is still a few years ahead!
Join the club!
A club of smart, sophisticated Astron owners. To paraphrase Seiko: "We
imagine an Astron owner as a man in jeans and white T-shirt jumping on
the plane with nothing but a laptop, ready to cross multiple time
zones". I imagine the Astron owner watching a live game, surrounded by
crowd of 40,000 people, smiling; knowing that he is probably the only
one wearing the most accurate watch of them all.
Bumping into another Astron owner is an experience reserved for members of a very elite club.
The choices are almost endless! Astron comes in variety of case styles,
bracelets, dial colours and finishes. Whatever the look, Astron is full
of life; a vibrant, high-tech timepiece for watch enthusiasts who simply
want more.
Personally, the only thing more exciting than an Astron: watching two
Astron being synchronized to GPS time; each at its own speed, each
trying hard to receive those weak signals from different satellites;
then watching the hands being turned around without any external command
or help; then ticking to beat, to the exact second, displaying the
EXACT time, effortlessly. Advanced horology, at its best.
"Is there such a thing as lady's Astron?" - She asked.
"Well, funny you've asked - yes, there is!"
(To be continued....)
