How Just One Mistake Destroyed Seiko

How Just One Mistake Destroyed Seiko Christmas morning, 1969. A department store in Tokyo. Behind a glass counter sits a single watch in an eighteen-karat gold case. It costs 450,000 yen — more than a Toyota Corolla. By the end of the day, a hundred of them are gone. The watch has no balance wheel, no hairspring, no escapement. Inside, a sliver of quartz crystal vibrates 8,192 times per second. It keeps time to within five seconds a month. The best Swiss mechanical watches of the day manage five seconds a day. The Seiko Astron has just arrived on Earth, and an industry that has dominated the world for three centuries has perhaps forty-eight hours before it realizes it is already finished.