石英手表的诞生

世界上第一块石英表的实际应用与音叉石英晶振的开发是不少工程师所流下的血液，汗水以及眼泪的结晶.随着时间慢慢的推移,石英晶振产品不断的连接着电视,电脑,手机,手表等慢慢靠近着我们的生活.渐渐的这些石英晶振产品已发展成电子行业不可或缺的固定产品.甚至被称为”工业之盐”,电子产品的”心脏”.这些石英晶振最早主由EPSON TOYOCOM公司生产制作而成.

The practical application of the world's first quartz watch and the development of the tuning fork quartz crystal oscillator are the crystallization of blood, sweat and tears that many engineers shed. As time goes by, quartz crystal products are continuously connected to TVs and computers. Mobile phones, watches, etc. are slowly approaching our lives. Gradually these quartz crystal products have developed into indispensable fixed products for the electronics industry. They are even called "the salt of industry", the "heart" of electronic products. These quartz crystal oscillators The earliest production was produced by EPSON TOYOCOM.

QMEMS(Quartz+”MEMS”)是促进MEMS(微电子机械系统)晶体材料微加工工艺独特技术的名称,是EPSON TOYOCOM公司产品的主要核心技术.通过充分利用这项技术的优势可以为石英晶体器件实现更小巧的尺寸及更好的性能.QMEMS技术的起源可以追溯到20世纪70年代初.

QMEMS (Quartz+ "MEMS") is the name of a unique technology that promotes micromachining of MEMS (micro-electro-mechanical systems) crystal materials. It is the main core technology of EPSON TOYOCOM. By taking advantage of this technology, it can be realized for quartz crystal devices. Smaller size and better performance. The origins of QMEMS technology can be traced back to the early 1970s.

1969年，在日本中部的苏瓦湖岸边，当地的一家公司悄然成功地将世界上第一块石英晶振手表变成了现实 - “精工石英天文35Q”（图1），这一事件让世界措手不及。

In 1969, on the shores of Lake Suva in central Japan, a local company quietly succeeded in turning the world's first quartz watch into reality - "Seiko Quartz Astronomy 35Q" (Figure 1), an event that caught the world off guard. .

这真是一个划时代的突破。在此之前，石英钟表虽然非常精确，但却非常大，以至于不能轻易携带，而是采用箱形钟表的形式悬挂在墙壁上。虽然机械手表当然已经存在，但这些并不精确。需要一个创新的解决方案来解决更好的精度和更紧凑的尺寸的双重问题，全球各地的公司都在1960年代中后期进行无情竞争以找到一个问题。

This is really an epoch-making breakthrough. Prior to this, quartz clocks, although very precise, were so large that they could not be easily carried, but were suspended from the wall in the form of a box-shaped clock. Although mechanical watches certainly exist, these are not precise. An innovative solution is needed to solve the double problem of better precision and more compact size, and companies around the world have ruthlessly competed in the mid to late 1960s to find a problem.

图1：世界上第一块石英手表'精工石英Astron 35Q'
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图2：Quartz Astron开发之前的晶体单元这是
在Quartz Astron到来之前实际使用的晶体单元
类型的一个例子。虽然看起来很大，长约50毫
米，但它实际上是当时最小的水晶单元之一.

它是精工苏瓦株式会社，苏瓦湖岸边，它正悄悄地控制着这个发展的竞争对手。使精工苏瓦株式会社领先其竞争对手的因素之一是该公司成功地使晶体单元更加紧凑。传统的水晶装置尺寸非常大，无法装入手表般小的东西（图2）。精工苏瓦株式会社通过采用称为“音叉晶体”的新结构解决了这个问题。新开发的'Cal.35SQ'型尺寸*晶体单元的直径为4.3mm×长度为18.5mm（图3）。此外，精工苏瓦株式会社还能够调整水晶单元的内部结构，以便克服腕表连接在佩戴者手腕上时经常受到的振动和撞击所引起的问题。

It is Seiko Suva Co., on the shores of Lake Suva, and it is quietly controlling this growing competitor. One of the factors that led Seiko Suva to lead its competitors was the company's success in making crystal units more compact. The traditional crystal device is very large in size and cannot be loaded into a watch-like thing (Fig. 2). Seiko Suva solved this problem by adopting a new structure called "tuning fork crystal". The newly developed 'Cal.35SQ' size* crystal unit has a diameter of 4.3 mm and a length of 18.5 mm (Fig. 3). In addition, Seiko Suva can adjust the internal structure of the crystal unit to overcome the problems caused by vibrations and impacts that are often encountered when the watch is attached to the wearer's wrist.

*此时公司开发的音叉式水晶单元用于Suwa Seikosha内部制造的手表。因此，“我们没有给他们一个特定的产品型号，只是通过他们的机芯名称或手表的操作机制（Calibre，或'Cal。'）来提及它们，”Mutsumi Negita说。

* At this time, the company's tuning fork crystal unit was used for watches made inside Suwa Seikosha. Therefore, "we didn't give them a specific product model, just mention them by their movement name or the operating mechanism of the watch (Calibre, or 'Cal.')," Mutsumi Negita said.

图3：Quartz Astron中使用的音叉晶体单元
采用新开发的音叉结构，使Suwa Seikosha能够成功制造出更小的晶体单元，半径仅为4.3mm，长度为18.5mm。它被分配了型号“Type Cal.35SQ”并且具有8.192kHz的正常频率。

Figure 3: Tuning fork crystal unit used in Quartz Astron
With the newly developed tuning fork structure, Suwa Seikosha was able to successfully manufacture smaller crystal units with a radius of only 4.3 mm and a length of 18.5 mm. It is assigned the model "Type Cal.35SQ" and has a normal frequency of 8.192 kHz.