Who invented quartz clocks?

Who invented quartz clocks?

In 1927, Canadian-born Warren Marrison, a telecommunications engineer, was searching for reliable frequency standards at Bell Telephone Laboratories. He developed a very large, highly accurate clock based on the regular vibrations of a quartz crystal in an electrical circuit – the first quartz clock.

Quartz clock operation is based on the piezoelectric property of quartz crystals. If you apply an electric field to the crystal, it changes its shape and if you squeeze it or bend it, it generates an electric field. When put in a suitable electronic circuit, this interacation between mechanical stress and electric field caused the crystal to vibrate, and generate a constant frequency electric signal that can be used to operate an electronic clock display.

Quartz crystal clocks were better because they had no gears or escapements to disturb their regular frequency. Even so, they still relied on a mechanical vibration whose frequency depended critically on the crystal’s size and shape. Thus, no two crystals can be precisely alike, with exactly the same frequency. Such quartz clocks continue to dominate the market today.