5 SEIKO ASTRON

Launched by Japan’s Seiko corporation in 1969, the Astron was the first large-scale production watch to be powered by a quartz movement. Like the electric watches that preceded it, the Astron was powered by a battery, sending a charge through a piece of crystal that oscillates at a very precise frequency, allowing a circuit to generate electric pulses exactly every second. Though the watch was initially priced on a par with a small car, quartz movements quickly became cheap to produce— companies like Seiko and Casio began producing countless affordable, accurate, low-maintenance timepieces, the popularity of which did wonderful things for the Japanese economy, but caused traditional Swiss watchmaking to go into meltdown.