When Seiko Decided Faster Might Mean Better
During the 1960s, mechanical watchmaking became increasingly obsessed with accuracy.
Manufacturers were competing at observatory trials, engineers were looking for ever smaller improvements, and one particular number began creeping upwards:
beat rate.
The theory was straightforward. A balance oscillating at a higher frequency divides time into smaller intervals and can be less affected by disturbances.
Making one work reliably was rather less straightforward.
Higher frequency means greater demands on the movement: more energy, greater wear and considerably more attention to lubrication, materials and manufacturing tolerances.
Yet by the end of the decade Seiko was producing wristwatches running at an extraordinary 36,000 vibrations per hour — ten beats every second.
And part of what drove it there was a rivalry happening inside Seiko itself.
Competition From Within
During this period Seiko had two principal manufacturing operations: Suwa Seikosha and Daini Seikosha.
Grand Seiko first appeared from Suwa in 1960.
Then, in 1961, Daini produced the first King Seiko.
The two weren't simply different names on watches emerging from the same production line. They came from different manufacturing operations whose engineers developed their own movements and competed technologically with one another.
That internal competition proved remarkably productive.
Both were chasing accuracy, and increasingly they were discovering that one route towards it was speed.
Before Hi-Beat
Early King Seiko movements were relatively conventional by later standards.
The first King Seiko was hand wound, followed by the KSK and then the calibre 44 family. These were not high-frequency movements. The 44 series operated at 18,000 vibrations per hour.
Yet they demonstrated what Daini could achieve through careful movement design, manufacture and adjustment.
Meanwhile, Seiko's engineers were gaining experience through precision competitions, pushing experimental movements considerably beyond what was found in ordinary production watches.
Eventually those two worlds began to meet.
Technology developed in the pursuit of observatory accuracy was finding its way onto the wrist.
36,000
Daini's answer was the calibre 45 family.
Hand wound, relatively slim and beating at 36,000 vibrations per hour, it represented an enormous leap from the 18,000 vph calibre 44.
At ten beats per second, the balance completes five full oscillations every second.
For a mechanical movement of the late 1960s, that was serious engineering.
Grand Seiko introduced the 45GS in 1968 using Daini's calibre 4520, Grand Seiko's first manually wound 10-beat movement.
King Seiko followed with its own 45-series Hi-Beat watches, including the 45KCM in 1969.
For Daini, high frequency had moved from experimental precision watchmaking into production watches that people could actually wear.
Why Go Faster?
A higher-frequency balance can recover more quickly from small disturbances.
Think of a watch being worn rather than sitting motionless on a timing machine. Throughout the day it changes position, receives small shocks and experiences constant movement.
Increasing the frequency gives those disturbances less influence over each individual oscillation.
But there is no free accuracy.
A faster balance requires more energy. Components interact more frequently. Lubrication becomes increasingly important and the movement must be manufactured to extremely fine tolerances.
For the watchmaker, that remains part of the fascination of vintage Hi-Beat movements.
They demonstrate what engineers could achieve mechanically, but they also remind us that specifications never tell the whole story.
Suwa Was Running Too
Daini wasn't alone.
Suwa developed its own high-frequency movements, most notably the automatic 61GS, also running at 36,000 vibrations per hour.
So by the late 1960s Seiko had arrived at the same destination by two different routes.
Daini had its hand-wound calibre 45.
Suwa had its automatic calibre 61.
Both were products of a period in which Seiko was pursuing mechanical precision with extraordinary determination.
And the results weren't confined to catalogues. The experience Seiko gained through precision competitions fed directly into these production movements.
The race was very real.
But Is Faster Always Better?
This is where the story becomes more interesting.
King Seiko's later 52-series movements operated at 28,800 vibrations per hour.
On paper, that's slower.
It certainly doesn't have the visual drama of HI-BEAT 36000 printed on a dial.
But frequency is only one part of making an accurate watch.
The 52-series became sophisticated automatic movements in their own right. Careful design, manufacture and adjustment could achieve excellent performance without chasing the highest possible beat rate.
The race for frequency had helped teach Seiko how to build better movements.
It didn't mean every subsequent movement needed to run at 36,000.
And then an entirely different technology changed the argument.
Quartz Knocks on the Door
There is something wonderfully Seiko about the timing.
While one group of engineers was finding increasingly ingenious ways of extracting greater precision from a balance wheel and hairspring, others within the company were developing a watch that didn't need either.
In December 1969, Seiko introduced the Quartz Astron.
Mechanical watchmaking's increasingly frantic pursuit of seconds suddenly encountered a technology capable of approaching accuracy on an entirely different scale.
The race hadn't been pointless.
Far from it.
The knowledge Seiko accumulated through competition, high-frequency development and precision manufacturing became part of the company's watchmaking DNA.
But the question had changed.
What the Race Left Behind
Today, a vintage Hi-Beat Seiko still has something rather wonderful about it.
Put one on a timegrapher and the sound alone tells you that you're dealing with something different.
Listen: 36,000 vph on the P2P bench
A vintage Seiko Hi-Beat being measured on the Past2Present timegrapher.
Look at the seconds hand and those ten beats per second produce the wonderfully fine progression around the dial that made Hi-Beat watches so distinctive.
But what makes these movements interesting isn't simply that they run fast.
It's why they exist.
They came from a period when Seiko's engineers were pushing mechanical watchmaking towards its limits, competing with the Swiss, competing at observatories and, rather unusually, competing with one another.
The quartz revolution was waiting around the corner.
For a brief period, though, the answer to greater mechanical precision seemed beautifully simple:
Make it beat faster.