Just Because Seven Of The Most Unusual Quartz Watch Movements

This is the very movement that spurred me to go deeper down the weird quartz rabbit hole. I found it while looking up the most affordable split-seconds chronographs - just something that I do in my spare time, I guess - resulting in my surprise that it was ever made, but also that it doesn’t seem to be available anymore. Before delving into that, what is “it”? Well, it’s the ETA 251.294FK PowerDrive Precision, a quartz chronograph movement sporting a whopping 27 jewels, a flyback function, and yes, a rattrapante. What’s more, the PowerDrive part of its name means that it’s able to time intervals accurate to 1/10th of a second thanks to its 200 Hz frequency.

British independent brand Farer used it extensively in their Fairford, Ainsdale, Elvington and Pendine chronographs (all essentially different colourways of the same watch), as has Malaysia-based brand Alcadus. With ETA’s decision to stop supplying its movements to anyone outside the Swatch Group, manufacturers were forced to move away from it, though it seems none of the conglomerate brands decided to continue using this calibre, as it’s mostly fallen into obscurity.

How about a fully digital watch that uses its LCD to display time with hours, minutes, and seconds hands? If your response to that question is “why?”, I hope you’ll accept the simple fact that this was a product of the 1980s as the answer. Timex made these analogue LCD watches in many different forms, some trying really hard to hide their digital nature by using an actual rehaut with hour indices surrounding a display, while others embraced it with a variety of features like alarms and calendar displays.

Miniaturising the iconic Swiss railway clock and its unique synchronisation system, the Stop2Go is Mondaine’s most popular watch, and for good reason. Just like the electronic clocks found at train stations across Switzerland, its seconds hand completes a dial revolution more quickly than usual, doing so in just 58 seconds, before it stops for 2 seconds at the top of each minute, advancing together with the tick of the minute hand.

In wristwatch format, this is little more than a novelty, but for the actual railway clocks, it’s an essential part of ensuring there is no discrepancy between any two clocks, as they all receive a central synchronising signal once per minute. This function also inspired Xhevdet Rexhepi’s first watch featuring his name on the dial, the Minute Inerte, although that watch features a much more complex, fully mechanical execution.

The second quirky digital watch on this list comes courtesy of Ventura, but rather than sporting a funky display, the Calibre 99 was unique as the world’s first automatic digital movement. Featuring in the Sparc collection, the Cal. 99 is wound by an automatic rotor, which supplies power to a micro-generator that powers the display. The right-hand-side crown allows you to set the time as you would on any watch, and also winds the aforementioned micro-generator. There is no replaceable battery, and to conserve its energy store, the movement switches to a standby mode when not used, but wakes up when moved - kind of like F.P. Journe’s Élégante.

If you believe that Grand Seiko’s quartz calibres are the be-all-end-all when it comes to battery-powered timekeeping (the 9F really is quite good), I’ll turn your attention to Citizen’s effort in Campanola. In the same way that Credor is to Seiko or Century is to Toyota, Campanola is the absolute pinnacle of Citizen’s offering, rejecting any form of minimalism and offering as much quartz watch as possible. The Grand Complication is its most impressive watch, combining a perpetual calendar, moonphase, split-seconds chronograph with sweeping hand, GMT, and a minute repeater. By far the coolest complication is that last one, as the watch allows you to set the minute repeater to a different time zone, independent of the main time display.

You wouldn’t know it looking at the brand today, but Piaget has a storied history with quartz movement manufacturing. Apart from being one of the members signed onto the Beta 21 project, they created the 7P in 1976, which became the thinnest quartz calibre at the time, and they also made this - the 212P Chronoflex. While it may seem like a simple three-register chrono on the surface, it was feature-packed, with a quick-setting hour hand, split-seconds chronograph (though without two superimposed seconds hands), and a perpetual calendar function that would baffle anyone trying to set it.

Also notably used by Cartier in Tank Américaines and Tank Françaises, the American Watchmakers and Clockmakers Institute gives a great breakdown of its quirks; the 212P is clearly part of an era that still wasn’t sure about the future of watchmaking being battery- or mainspring-powered.

Here’s a watch that’s not shy at all about being an oddity. The Devon Tread is a darling of watch enthusiast forums of yesteryear thanks to its “time belt” display, with separate motors powering the constantly running seconds, minutes split into ones and tens, and the wide, horizontal hour belt. Making sure the battery doesn’t run out, you can turn off the running seconds or put it into power-saving mode, where that same seconds belt acts as sort of a power reserve indicator, indicating from 1 to 10.

It should come at no surprise that a watch like this wasn’t the most reliable, with numerous issues arising as a result of its uniqueness, but what else would you expect from a brainchild of the same guy who used his frozen garlic bread business millions (I’m not kidding) to design clothes, motorcycles, and try to buy the rights to the Dodge Viper to make his own supercars?