Watchmakers of Switzerland, 1950

At the end of WW2, Switzerland dominated the watch market. Because of their policy of neutrality, they had been able to keep making watches while other countries produced war materiel.  By 1960 they owned fully 50% of the market. These of course were all mechanical watches powered by a wind-up spring.

Meanwhile there was much development in electronics for keeping time. In 1954 a Swiss engineer, Max Hertzel had developed a mechanism based on a tuning fork energized by a battery but the watch, named the Accutron, was produced by Bulova, an American company. Seiko introduced the first quartz clock in 1964 while teams all over the world were all working on a quartz watch. Seiko introduced theirs in 1969, the Swiss version appeared in 1970. The Seiko sold, the Swiss model was not a big success, and they went back to mechanical mechanisms. This was nearly the death of the Swiss watch industry, in 1973 they had exported 40 million watches, 10 years later it was down to 3 million. At that point, with the industry collapsing, the plastic-case quartz Swatch was introduced. That story at Firstclasswatches