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Personal Devices · Recorded milestone

Quartz watch

Recorded year1969

A quartz wristwatch keeps time to a few seconds a month on a small battery, far better than any wind-up watch.

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Built on

Quartz oscillatorRecorded · 1921enables
Quartz clockRecorded · 1927enables
Battery wristwatchRecorded · 1957enables
Integrated circuitRecorded · 1958enables
MOSFETRecorded · 1959requires

Led to

Digital watchRecorded · 1972enables
Radio-controlled wristwatchRecorded · 1990enables

Sources & evidence

Additional source

Dataset updated 2026-10-18. This individual record has not been separately re-reviewed.