Rolex's Hidden Quartz Movement Watches from the Quartz Revolution

Silicon watch craft can be described as two poles, focusing on practical people between mechanical watches and quartz watches, will not hesitate to choose quartz watches, while the purely mechanical watch hands are using battery-powered quartz movement is very few.

But like it or hate it, quartz has been an important part of watchmaking history. There's no denying that Rolex inevitably made some quartz watches during the "quartz revolution". Although few people know about these Rolex watches today, their presence is a testament to the fact that Rolex almost rewrote history during the stormy times.

In the following we would like to highlight a quartz movement that could not be ignored during its development: the Beta-21 quartz movement. As in the history of mechanical watches, there is no getting away from the ETA core. Quartz oscillators appeared in the 1930s for large clocks. From the early 1960s, the quartz core experimentation began to miniaturize. This new oscillating industry had an early focus on Swiss watchmaking, but was quickly taken over by Japanese companies due to its industrial chain and position in the traditional watchmaking industry.

The Swiss watch industry was hit by the "quartz revolution" in the Japanese watch industry, 20 Swiss watch companies, including Patek Philippe and Rolex, in 1962. Burds, Omega and other companies set up the C.E.H company, specializing in research and development, manufacturing and manufacturing of highly efficient, precise, reliable products, precision quartz movements.

This was an incentive for Rolex to make quartz watches for the Patek Philippe brand, because at that time an oil crisis happened to break out and the economy was in depression. The quartz watch with its high precision, small size, good economy, easy to make and many other advantages to quickly occupy the market, and really into the ordinary watch, become the mainstream type of watch.

The first Beta-1 was built in 1966 after many years of research. The following year, Beta-2 was made for the "International Exhibition Center of the Neuchâtel Observatory" and won the first place in the test, with a speed change of only 0.0003 seconds per day.

But these two models were still only conceptual attempts; it was the Beta-21 model that really went into production. 20 Swiss watch brands agreed to produce 6,000 Beta-21 cores. That same year, a new record was set in Basel, where hundreds of watches equipped with Beta-21 cores were on display. At the end of the same year, the Japanese manufacturing giant Seiko Watch Co. also unveiled its first quartz model, the Astron. this was the moment when the quartz watch battle was in full swing.

The Beta-21 was quickly adopted by many major brands with quartz models including Patek Philippe, Omega and Rolex. Between 1971-1972, Rolex also released its own quartz models, the 5100, and the Beta 21, which I'm told Zunda had previously been involved in styling, showing one-piece lugs and a bracelet with natural transitions, with flat-brushed bracelet links and chamfered edges. There are 999 pieces in total, 900 in gold and 99 in white gold, and for the first time Rolex has fitted a synthetic sapphire glass crystal to one of its own models.

The watch was not only one of Rolex's earliest quartz watches, it was also the first Rolex watch to be made from sapphire glass.