![]() ![]() That watch, the Astron, forever disrupted watchmaking and almost destroyed the traditional, mechanical market. Both the Ventura and X8 Cosmotron were predecessors to the industry-changing quartz movement, with the first commercially available quartz watch that was launched by Seiko in 1969. It was a boon for the Japanese watch industry, which was looking for futuristic innovation, and it wasn’t long before Japan led the world with electric watches. The Citizen Caliber 0100, the most accurate autonomous light-powered wristwatchĬitizen introduced its own hybrid-electric watch that went head-to-head with Hamilton’s Ventura, the X8. Let’s step back some 50 years back for a minute and see how the brand first entered the electric arena, which ultimately led to today’s Eco-Drive. Citizen is a true pioneer in this space and the first brand to introduce a commercially available light-powered analogue watch. Light-powered movements are also a major advancement, eliminating battery waste and showcasing incredible levels of efficiency. Certain quartz movements fall into this category, of course, like Citizen’s Calibre 0100, the most accurate wristwatch movement in the world (+/- 1 second per year). We generally only cover mechanical watches at MONOCHROME, but sometimes technology is significant enough that it can’t be ignored. Meet the new Citizen Eco-Drive 365 collection. And the future takes shape today, thanks to Citizen, with a watch with a 1-year power reserve on a single charge. The mainspring was simply replaced by an electronic equivalent, but the future was knocking. It wasn’t an electric watch as we know them today as it still had a mechanical balance wheel and escapement. This was a transitional technology, however, that was flawed as battery life was relatively short and the watches were somewhat unreliable, making “old-school” windup counterparts more practical. It was powered by a battery and never needed to be wound, and the movement was matched with the asymmetrical Ventura line that Elvis Presley made famous in his 1961 hit movie, Blue Hawaii. Back in 1957, Hamilton (then still an American watchmaker) launched the world’s first electric watch, the Electric 500. ![]()
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