Citizen is celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of its first analog light-powered watch with the discharge of its Eco-Drive Photon watch in a restricted version, with two variants of 5,000 models every that pay homage to the peculiar physics of sunshine.
Within the Nineteen Seventies, the world of the watch was present process a revolution that even those that instigated it might scarcely perceive. Within the late Sixties, the Swiss Centre Électronique Horloger consortium developed the Beta 21 quartz motion, which went into manufacturing in 1970, although Japan’s Seiko beat them to market with its Quartz Astron 35SQ in December 1969. These have been adopted by the US Hamilton Watch Firm, which in Could 1970 revealed its Pulsar P1 digital watch.
Together with various different pioneers, they precipitated a sensation. They displayed an accuracy that earlier than might solely be present in nautical chronometers, and watches just like the Pulsar did away with fingers in favor of LED digital shows. By 1973, even James Bond was sporting one.
Photon
Nonetheless, these early quartz marvels had a few drawbacks. Till the economies of scale kicked in that might shove mechanical actions into close to oblivion inside a decade, quartz watches have been priced nicely on the luxurious finish of the market. The opposite was that the silver oxide batteries that ran them had the longevity of a peanut at an elephant conference – particularly if the watch had an electromechanical analog show with its power-hungry step motor.
That kind of battery consumption generally is a actual dealbreaker. It is the rationale why I gave up on quartz watches a couple of years in the past and now put on a mechanical job with an computerized motion. Earlier than this, I wore an almost equivalent watch besides it had a quartz motion that ate batteries at a charge of 1 each 12 to 18 months. That is an actual ache when you’ve gotten a dive watch that requires an authorized watchmaker to exchange the batteries and such technicians aren’t simple to search out in my neck of the woods.
In 1974, Citizen produced its first prototype of a light-powered analog quartz watch that integrated a photo voltaic cell on the watch face. A manufacturing model known as the Crysotron Photo voltaic Cell hit the market in 1976 with a grid of eight photo voltaic cells on the dial.
Citizen
These helped to prime up the battery in addition to taking a few of the work of powering the motion off it, however the watch had to spend so much of time within the gentle due to effectivity points. Within the Nineteen Eighties the corporate centered on making photo voltaic cells and rechargeable batteries extra environment friendly. Consequently, by 1986 Citizen’s watches might run for 200 hrs on a single cost.
In 1995, Citizen formally known as their proprietary tech the Eco-Drive and launched its Eco-Drive Calibre 7878 that had the photo voltaic cell mounted beneath the dial utilizing a non-transparent floor that enables non-visible gentle to filter via. Across the similar time, lithium-ion batteries got here alongside, extending the ability reserve to 180 days in whole darkness. For context, lithium-ion batteries additionally drove nuclear pacemakers out of the marketplace for the identical cause.
At this time, the Eco-Drive line contains skilled dive watches, are able to receiving GPS alerts for precise timekeeping, and a few fashions are as skinny as 2.98 mm. In the meantime, the Eco-Drive 365 had boosted the ability reserve to three hundred and sixty five days per cost.
Citizen
Launched on March 19, 2026, the Eco-Drive Photon pays tribute to this technological innovation by additionally paying a little bit of homage to the physics of sunshine and its paradoxical nature. The dial consists of two steel plates that boast ripple-like slits layered over a structural colour movie. The result’s a three-dimensional impact with the interaction of sunshine within the slits creating shifting hues.
The concept behind that is to invoke the double-slit experiment, which demonstrates how gentle behaves as each a particle and a wave, relying on how it’s noticed. The experiment includes a steel plate with two slits, via which gentle passes from a coherent supply comparable to a laser. When the sunshine passes via the slits and hits a sensor or photographic plate, it could possibly behave both like a wave or like a stream of particles. It could type an interference sample, as if two units of waves are overlapping, or produce two distinct bands, as particles would, relying on how the measurement is made.
Anyway, that is all for science class.
As to the Photon, it runs on a Calibre E036 (Eco-Drive) with a 365-day energy reserve and has an accuracy of ±15 seconds per 30 days. That is sealed in a case of proprietary Tremendous Titanium with a sapphire crystal. The case has a diameter of 41 mm, is rated to a depth of 330 ft (100 m), and is secured with a Tremendous Titanium band. The entire thing weighs in at 85 g (3 oz).
Set to be launched on the market later this yr, the Photon is available in two variations of 5,000 models every, one completed in Duratect titanium carbide, and the opposite in Duratect amber yellow. They retail for between US$1,000 to $1,200.
Supply: Citizen
