Re: Are radio controlled watches anti-watch?

I don't think quartz watches have any absolute limit in theory. In reality,
economics largely dictates against their lube & repair in most cases, even
if the movement is assembled with screws and not plastic welded, as some
are, so the first time they break they will be discarded or put in a drawer
never to be worn again. Most movements have few or no jewels, so
eventually there will be wear and the need for lubrication, even in the
absense of a mainspring to put the train under load. The chips and crystals
are potentially long lasting, being solid state, but the coils are fairly
delicate and easily damaged, and also sooner or later a battery may leak and
wreak havoc, especially (as is common) if the watch is put away with a dead
battery. Defects in original construction will cause other circuits to fail
eventually - the manufacturers (rightly) are not concerned with building a
circuit that can run for a century without breaking, so solder joints will
fail, boards will delaminate, etc. Board level repair of quartz watches is
even less common than their mechanical repair.

Personally, I don't see any need to have a watch that runs for 100 years.
For some reason this is a special silliness of mechanical watch collectors,
perhaps because it is something tangible they can point to as an "advantage"
of mechanical watches. We don't expect almost any product we buy to last a
century or even more than a couple of decades (or in the case of computers a
couple of years). A few do anyway, but that's not our main reason for buying
them. Because of the "time value of money" and the exponential nature of
compound interest , a dollar's worth of utility in the future is worth less
than a dollar's worth of utility today and a dollar's worth a century from
now is only worth a couple of pennies today. You can also add technological
obsolescence - while a century old pocket watch still tells the time
(unlike say a 5 year old TV, which will very soon be a boat anchor as
analog TV is retired) but very few people still wear pocket watches, not to
mention that they lack shock protection, water resistance, etc. which most
of us expect in watches today. Even much newer wristwatches are often
unwearable because they are deeply out of style. Between obsolescence,
changing fashions and time value of money, most of the utility of any
product comes in its first few years, so putting little or no value on the
ability to run after we are all long dead is an entirely rational consumer
choice.

I am not as optimistic as you are about batteries - there are dozens of
different sizes and I doubt they will ALL continue in production for another
century, especially if some new technology (say fuel cells) sweeps aside
batteries in general. Edison was able to standardize the world on a single
light bulb socket at a time when the technological pace was much slower.
Even so, I think we are in the twilight of the incandescent bulb if not the
Edison base, as compact fluorescents are the better choice in most
instances, soon to be followed by LEDs. Perhaps if watches all used one
battery the chances would be better.


"Guy Macon" <"http://www.guymacon.com/"@example.com> wrote in message
news:11tn6lht03qj2f2@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
>
>
> Jack Denver wrote:
>>
>>Guy Macon <http://www.guymacon.com/> wrote:
>>>
>>> Olaf Peuss wrote:
>>>
>>>>No, you're not alone, and neither is something lost. There are millions
>>>>of people who feel that mechanical watches hold a lot of fascination.
>>>>It's also very likely that mechanical watches will outlive quartz
>>>>watches, if they are properly serviced, as the electronic components
>>>>start ageing from the moment of production and will eventually
>>>>deteriorate to the point where they fail and render quartz watches
>>>>useless. The estimated lifespan of quartz watches is less than 50 years.
>>>
>>> As an engineer with a fair amount of experience in reliability
>>> engineering, I would be most interested in finding out the source
>>> of the above estimate.
>>
>>If anything, that's long - if nothing else, the chances that batteries of
>>the same type and size will be available in 50 years are not that good.
>>Already, Accutrons from the '70s are hard to run due to lack of battery
>>availability.
>
> While battery obsolescence is an interesting thing to try to predict,
> I don't see it as having anything to do with "the estimated lifespan
> of quartz watches." That would be like saying that the lifespan of
> mechanical watches should be calculated by estimating whether there
> will be a trained service person who can service a mechanical watch
> 50 years from now, or by estimating whether there fine watch oil will
> still be available 50 years from now. The question is whether there
> is a wear-out mechanism for quartz watches and if so how long is
> the mean time to wearout.
>
> The general rule for techological products is that there will be a lot
> of different types at first, with the market settling down to a few
> standard parts later. I expect that such items as standard-size
> staples, edison-base light bulbs and CR2032 watch batteries will be
> widely available a hundred years from now. There are far too many
> products that use them, and more are being built every day.
>
>
> --
> Guy Macon
> <http://www.guymacon.com/>
>


.

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