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The best quartz ever made. Citizen "The Citizen" 0100 caliber, and a little history of the manufacture.

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Conchita Turtle
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The best quartz ever made. Citizen "The Citizen" 0100 caliber, and a little history of the manufacture.

Post by Conchita Turtle »

Citizen is one of those brands that, like Seiko, is Japanese and specializes in popularly priced quartzes. Perhaps that's why, when making high-end pieces, its " lowly " name makes many potential customers think of Swiss when spending a luxury watch. Intangibles and such, what can I say...


Just as the mother of all Ferraris is the LaFerrari, the Citizen par excellence proudly bears this name.

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The Citizen has been the best quartz on the market, unmatched in its characteristics by any other quartz in the world (and we remember that prestigious Swiss firms like Patek have quartz in their catalog, or that they have their neighbors from Grand Seiko in Japan)... They have just released an incredible new model, with an accuracy of 1 second per year. I present it further.

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But... how did we get to this one?



Let's go a little back in time.

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In 1892, Kamekichi Yamazaki, opened a retail jewel store in Asakusa, Tokyo called "Shimizu Shoten".
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Yamazaki was the first person in Japan to use 18- and 24-carat gold as a system for measuring the purity of gold, in addition to writing treatises on diamond cutting techniques. That business he founded is today's high-end jewelry firm Ginza Tanaka, which is very prestigious in Japan, and which has made record-breaking pieces, such as this Disney Christmas tree, weighing 40 kilos in 24-carat gold, for the modest price of $4.2 million. :oops:

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In 1918, Yamazaki opened a watchmaking division in his jewelry business, what would become Citizen, under the name "Shokosha". Since Citizen is now independent of Ginza Tanaka, celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2018.

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A few years later, he imported machinery from Switzerland to start manufacturing his pocket watches in 1924.

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The pocket watch carries the self-described "Calibre 16" movement (yes, like Tag Heuer :D) and reminds other Swiss (f.e. Cortébert), but if you look at the bottom, there is the name of Shokosha, its logo, an S in a star, and the name of Citizen.
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A friend of Yamazaki, the mayor of Tokyo, calls the watch CITIZEN, since he hopes that the watch, then a luxury item, will eventually be accessible to all citizens. The first one made, this one in the photo below, which is now in the firm's museum, however, will not go to just any citizen... but to Hirohito, the crown prince and future emperor.

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In 1931, after the watchmaking division had been sold the previous year to two Swiss watch importing partners, Yosaburo Nakajima and Ryoichi Suzuki, Citizen launched its first wristwatch, the Citizen F. It was about 30mm in diameter.

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Initially, sales were small, I had in front of the Swiss competition. But due to currency exchange issues, the following year he began to enjoy commercial success. Soon after, the watch began to be exported outside Japan, to other Asian countries. With various updates and improvements, the Citizen F was manufactured until 1957.

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Re: Working on it...The best quartz ever made. Citizen "The Citizen" 0100 caliber, and a little history of the firm.

Post by Conchita Turtle »

Let's go a little ahead of time.

Although we usually talk about Seiko Astron as the great watchmaking revolution, it was the last logical step after a few years when several of its commercial rivals started electrifying their watches. Lip from France and Hamilton vie to be the parents of the first electric wristwatch, and Bulova says they were the first electronic ones, with their tuning forks.

Citizen launches the X8 Cosmotron in 1966. Citizen claimed that this was the first watch in the world to adopt a motor with magnets, while its regulating system had a transistor.

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Two years later, that watch launches it as a chronometer, with a name that will later become famous: Chronomaster. And the Cosmotron continued evolving until the quartz came from the hand of the neighbour and made the electromechanical ones obsolete.

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If anyone is interested, this page has a lot of information:
https://sweep-hand.org/the-x8-cosmotron/

Another milestone is that, from that same X8 collection, electronics, in 1970 makes the first titanium watches on the market. Keep this information also...

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But, as I said above, electromechanics soon became obsolete with the appearance of the first quartzes at Christmas 1969 from the neighbor across the street. In mid 1973, Citizen presented his first Crystron family of quartzes, with the 8811 caliber. Although it was a technology that became popular quickly, the prices were initially VERY high, so few units were made, and today they are rare. At that time 25000 JPY was the monthly salary of a government official.

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The year 1975, quartz crisis in the Swiss firms, quartz revolution in the Japanese firms, which seems to sweep away the Helvetians (and they almost didn't make it). Citizen presents two novelties. The first solar analogues and... the Crystron Mega, a super-quartz that announces 3 seconds per year of accuracy. To give you an idea, the current Swiss COSC chronometric certification for quartz is 0.07 seconds per day... 25 seconds per year. Today, 45 years later, it would still be more accurate than virtually any other watch.

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How did they get it? The quartz crystal of practically all commercial watches, not just then, but today, oscillates at 32KHz, exactly 32768 Hertz; or in other words, it vibrates 32768 times per second; number obtained from raising 2 to the power 15 (2 ^ 15). This Crystron Mega oscillated at 4.2MHz, or if you prefer 4194304 hertz. They had 128 times the standard oscillation, that is, 2 times the power 22.

To comment on this, Omega had made another ultra high frequency superquartz the previous year, although not as much as the Citizen: the Megaquarz Marine Chronometer, at 2.4MHz... which even today the Swiss announce as the most accurate ever made.

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Personally, I find it impressive that two watches from 45 years ago, when quartz watchmaking was in its nappies, have not been surpassed until now when Citizen has brought out its 0100 caliber. Somehow, the accuracy of a quartz was considered "sufficient" at 32KHz... and to this day.

Crystron Mega advertisement.
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And this is the Crystron Solar Cell. First solar quartz. The solar panels on the dial are a little bit odd... maybe that's why it didn't have the commercial success it was hoping for. But the idea was taken up again later...

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Re: Working on it...The best quartz ever made. Citizen "The Citizen" 0100 caliber, and a little history of the firm.

Post by Conchita Turtle »

Again we moved with the DeLorean in time.

Year 1995. Citizen presents two novelties. It takes back the sundials I referred to above, which were initially unsuccessful, with the EcoDrive, which once charged has autonomy for half a year. Seen in perspective it seems to me that this is a solution that, I think, has been imposed on the failed Kinetic of the rival Seiko (and Autoquartz of some Swiss) to eliminate the batteries of the analogical clock.

And another is that it takes back the very high precision quartz with a name that had been forgotten since 1972, "ChronoMaster". To avoid confusion with its progenitor, even though it is officially "Chronomaster" this watch will be informally called "The Citizen" and will be equipped with the caliber 0350, guaranteeing ±5 seconds per year... the same as a mechanical COSC a day.

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And if you allow me, and you haven't got bored yet with the roundabout... with this watch begins a saga that goes on until today, making what are perhaps the most precise quartzes on the market...

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Until now (then we present the Non-Plus-Ultra that has just come out), the star model of Citizen, the latest evolution of the saga The Citizen to which I referred in the previous post, was this one.

AQ4030

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The aesthetics are not very different from the ones in front of Grand Seiko. The construction is made of titanium, but with its own DuraTec treatment, which they claim is 10 times more resistant to scratching than steel. And yes, the polishing is the famous Zaratsu craftsmanship. Another parallelism with Morioka's is that these watches are also made in a small studio in Iida, Nagano, by the "Super Meister" or more experienced and better workers of the firm.

We already know that the Japanese like special dials. Interestingly, the textured one comes because the dial is made of a special paper, the Tosa Washi, which is handmade, and was traditionally used to make paper doors and walls, as well as lanterns.

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The calibre is an EcoDrive A060, of which we see its fine finish, and which on the other hand has a solar cell underneath the dial. The watch is thermocompensated, checking the temperature every minute, to adjust its accuracy if necessary.

As a curious feature, if it does not receive light, after a while, its hands go into "power saving" mode and go to 12 o'clock, but the watch keeps time, and when it receives light again, it moves the hands to show the correct time.

Another feature is that it has a perpetual calendar.

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Re: Working on it...The best quartz ever made. Citizen "The Citizen" 0100 caliber, and a little history of the firm.

Post by Conchita Turtle »

Until now, "The Citizen" had no competitor in the market. Officially, the Grand Seiko 9F declared a conservative 10 seconds per year, although its users refer much less. But Longines has also resurrected old acronyms, VHP, "Very High Precision", with a thermo-compensated quartz with a perpetual calendar in its popular Conquest collection... and also refers to 5 seconds per year. It can do even more damage... and costs half as much.

Citizen can't let the Swiss humiliate her...

And, as I was saying from the beginning. Citizen has introduced its 0100 calibre, with the number given by the firm's centenary, and a new The Citizen. But the most remarkable and incredible thing is its precision... 1 second per year. Also its price, as we said above, "affordable to all citizens", $16,800 is nothing, which we all have in our pockets.:D

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And now comes the final chapter...
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Re: Working on it...The best quartz ever made. Citizen "The Citizen" 0100 caliber, and a little history of the firm.

Post by Conchita Turtle »

Well, let's go to the mother of all quartzes.

In 2018, they present a pocket watch with a sapphire case, a unique 1/1 edition, as the star watch in Basel to commemorate the firm's centenary.
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It's not too flashy up front. But it is on the back, where we see a black caliber marked as 0100, honoring the 100 years of the firm. And they made a great effort to offer the first commercial caliber to deviate one second per year.

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It inherits some characteristics of the "old" 0060, such as being thermally compensated or calculating the position of the hands, so that in case of a blow, they can be corrected. Likewise, the calibre itself is anti-magnetic, without the need for a sweet iron cage, at 4800 gauss.

But it has two striking new features.

One, a new design of the quartz crystal, which they call "AT cut", in the shape of a pyramid.
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And another. If you remember, upstairs we said this from the 1975 Crystron Mega...
The quartz crystal of practically all commercial watches, not just from that time, but from today, oscillates at 32768 Hertz, or in other words, it vibrates 32768 times per second; number obtained from raising 2 to the power 15 (2 ^ 15). This Crystron Mega oscillated at 4194304 hertz. They had multiplied by 128 the standard oscillation, that is, 2 raised to the power 22.
This is at 8388608 hertz, almost 8.4MHz. 2 raised to 23...

Citizen claims that these characteristics make it require more energy, but it doesn't matter... the watch is solar.



And now, in September 2019, he is launching commercial watches equipped with the prototype's caliber, in three editions.

The good one, that for not being less than those of Seiko when they launched the first Astron has a price like a Toyota Corolla, with white gold case, alligator strap and ruthenium dial, limited to 100 pieces.
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The "poor man's", which is only worth 800k yen plus tax in Japan, or 6800 euros of nothing at all at the exchange rate, whose case is made of titanium with Duratect anti-scratch coating (they claim to have 10 times the hardness of steel), and with a bracelet. Here you have the choice between two dials, black with a honeycomb texture (500 units), and mother of pearl (200 units).

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The diameter is 37mm, perhaps a little small for Western tastes, but we have in mind that it is a watch in principle for the Japanese market. The back will be seen, to proudly display the caliber.

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For the indexes they replicate the shape of the AT quartz crystal. They also say that they have been inspired by that design to make the hands and other details of the watch.

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And, this time, I'm finishing. There may be new continuations... but we'll have to wait for other years. As restless as the Japanese are, they may soon present us with a watch accurate to one second in a decade. :D



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Re: The best quartz ever made. Citizen "The Citizen" 0100 caliber, and a little history of the manufacture.

Post by MoT »

Incredible thread! Thank you for taking the time to put it together.

It certainly inspired me to look at Citizen more closely.
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Re: The best quartz ever made. Citizen "The Citizen" 0100 caliber, and a little history of the manufacture.

Post by watchpalooza »

Thank you for taking the the time to create this thread. I am a huge fan of Citizen, both historically and for the amazing value and quality offered even in their lower end watches. One of my favorite brands.
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Re: The best quartz ever made. Citizen "The Citizen" 0100 caliber, and a little history of the manufacture.

Post by PetWatch »

Great write up on what is probably my favorite brand, hard to beat in terms of quality + value, and with enough diversity throughout their whole line to offer something for everyone. I also like to mention their exquisite Campanola line, which I consider the epitome of fine quartz horology in the world.
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