Spring Drive's Beginning

The system was meant to considerably improve the accuracy provided by a mechanical timepiece. in his notebooks Akahane drew a mechanical movement with a mainspring, barrel, gear train and other components, wired to an integrated circuit.In fact, today it seems ironic that in the 1970s an engineer from Seiko took efforts to increase the accuracy of a mechanical movement. It was the Seiko company that started the quartz watch revolution in December 1969, having launched the first quartz watch in the world. It was the analog quartz Astron 35SQ. In the 1970s the Seiko company introduced a series of electronic timepieces that turned the horology world upside-down.Seiko considers its Spring Drive to be the second by importance watch ever developed by the company. The story of the Seiko Spring Drive started back in 1977. Yoshikazu Akahane, a young engineer of Seiko watches in Japan was overwhelmed by the idea to invent a mechanical timepiece that would provide the same level of accuracy as a quartz watch. During the day the engineer worked upon the development of Seiko quartz watches. Later, by night Akahane tried to create an 'everlasting watch', as he called his future invention. The engineer wanted to replace the escapement considered to be a mechanical movement's weakest link with a time-regulating electronic system.