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COSC, METAS, Rolex Superlative, Seiko VFA (+2,-2)... in 1969, origin of Grand Seiko, some superquartz... and more stuff.

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COSC, METAS, Rolex Superlative, Seiko VFA (+2,-2)... in 1969, origin of Grand Seiko, some superquartz... and more stuff.

Post by Conchita Turtle »

This is a topic originally written in Spanish for the "Hablemos de Relojes" spaniard watch forum. I have translated it automatically with Deepl, sorry if sometimes the translation is not perfect.



Harrison invents the marine chronometer in 1730. Thanks to it, it was possible to determine, in a time when there was no GPS, the position at sea.

In the 19th century, chronometry contests emerged. The organizers were some astronomical observatories, which verified the accuracy of these marine chronometers. Eventually, the chronometers left the sea and jumped into the pockets first, and then into the wrists. We can describe as a chronometer a watch that meets a standard that requires high precision.

The ISO 3159 chronometry standard establishes an accuracy of (+6 , -4) seconds per day in calibres over 20mm in diameter, which have to be certified by an independent and neutral entity. The COSC standard, set in 1973, is based on them, adding some features such as that movements have to have a second hand, and a serial number; analyzing single movements, without fitting into a watch. There is also a German standard, DIN8319, based on ISO 3159, which examines watches already assembled at the Glashutte Observatory, and a French standard, "Observatoire Chronometer", at the Besançon Observatory.

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Some 20 years ago, Seiko re-launched the Grand Seiko sub-brand, with its own certification (+5, +3 in 6 positions and 3 temperatures, for 17 days) which was more demanding than that of the COSC, (+6, -4 in 5 positions and 3 temperatures, for 15 days)... something that did not worry the Swiss.

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Despite the fact that the Seiko were stricter, the COSC standard has continued to set a standard of excellence, without there seeming to be much demand for more precision. After all, the GS were a rarity almost in their own market, and something that only a handful of very enthusiastic people acquired in Europe or America.


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In 2015, perhaps to raise the bar, Omega obtained a new certification that was more demanding than the COSC, the Master Chronometer certification, through the official Swiss body METAS.

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The METAS certification was open to any Swiss manufacturer, and improved the COSC by far. Some of its criteria were that the watches had to be complete in order to be tested (the COSC, as we said above, only tests mechanisms), have a certain water resistance (something that is tested internally by the manufacturers, but not officially) and power reserve, and, something that for the moment only Omega certifies them, being totally anti-magnetic at 15k Gauss. Similarly, a METAS certification requires that a watch must keep time within 0 and 5 seconds per day. And, this is where the mother of the lamb is. A certification twice as strict as the COSC, stricter than the Grand Seiko, and... than their neighbors across the street.

The Rolex team, who have been using a "Superlative Chronometer" on their watch faces since the 1950s, have counter-attacked Omega with their "Superlative Chronometer" certification (+2, -2), also for complete watches, to which they add additional waterproofing and resistance tests.

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Although it is stricter in time than Omega's, and continues to send the watches to the COSC for official independent certification, it does not pass all the resistance tests of the previous ones.

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Well... and in Japan... who for years have proudly led the way in beating the two benchmarks, they see that they have been passed on to the right. The thing is, as we'll see, Seiko's is not the first time they've responded (and strongly so) to Swiss challenges.
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Re: COSC, METAS, Rolex Superlative, Seiko VFA (+2,-2)... in 1969, origin of Grand Seiko, some superquartz... and more st

Post by Conchita Turtle »

But we're going to go in the back.



In 1960 Seiko presents 3180, recently reissued. With it begins the Grand Seiko saga. At a time when the perception of the Japanese was not very different from today's Chinese products, something cheap and copied, the intention was to raise the image of the Japanese watch from "cheap" to "something that could compete with the Swiss". Those were different times. The watch guaranteed high precision for the time... between -1 and +12 seconds per day. The fact is that they sent some units to the Bureaux Officiels de Contrôle de la Marche des Montres, the predecessor of the COSC, and the Swiss gave them an excellent rating.

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A few years later, in 1964, the Olympics are held in Tokyo, and Seiko is the official timekeeper. He uses the first portable quartz (until then, they were like big cabinets), the QC-951 Crystal Chronometer, to measure time, with an accuracy of 0.2 seconds per day, something almost unthinkable at the time.

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It also takes the opportunity to present its new generation of wrist chronometers, such as the GS calibre 5722.

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Although they had taken advantage of the Olympics to try to gain prestige and position themselves in the upper segment of the market, at that time, prestige among brands was played out on the Swiss playing field, and particularly at Le Concours chronométrique de l`Observatoire de Neuchâtel .

And in their first participation, Seiko's were ranked 144th.
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Re: COSC, METAS, Rolex Superlative, Seiko VFA (+2,-2)... in 1969, origin of Grand Seiko, some superquartz... and more st

Post by Conchita Turtle »

The test of the contest was to examine its accuracy for 45 days. Those who passed were certified as "Authorized Astronomical Observatory Chronometers." The year 1964, the one they had taken to the Olympics. And here came the first reality snap.

The Japanese government had organized some domestic contests to improve chronometry, which Seiko had won. After winning in Japan, she sent two watches to the Concours. One, from the Daini Seikosha division, was ranked 144th. The other, from the Suwa branch, was 155th....


In those years the Swiss said that a watch to have the little Swiss chronometer title on the dial had to be Swiss. And the Official European Chronometer Association required that a watch with a chronometer rating had to be tested by an independent external testing body in order to be awarded the Chronometer designation (as is required today by ISO 3159). Since Grand Seiko watches did not undergo independent testing, OEA demanded that the designation be removed. The Japanese manufacturers decided to establish a Japanese Chronometer Association in 1969 (which was to cease in the 1980s) to act as an independent body in accordance with official standards, and a few Seikos continued to have the title.

However, it was in 1966 that Seiko presented its Grand Seiko certification, which was stricter than the European certification, and began to mark its most exquisite and precise watches with this name, which had already been in use for a few years. They also launched their first automatic GS. To put some perspective on the matter, back then, when the starting monthly salary of a national government employee in Japan was only 25,000 yen, this 61GS was sold for 37,000 yen.

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In 1967, they returned to Neuchatel Concours, after three years of very discreet positions, the Daini Seikosha division came close to the podium with positions 4, 5, 7 and 8, and those of Suwa with the twelfth position. This would be one of those calibres, Seiko 052, which had a great anti-magnetic protection to prevent the calibre from being magnetised on the flight to Switzerland.

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Omega won that year. "Oddly enough" was the last year that the Neuchatel people would organize the contest. The next year, when Seiko had already sent in the watches for the contest, the contest was "suspended".:cool:

Since there was no contest in Neuchâtel, they went to Geneva... and came in fourth. And fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth. But you have to look at one "little" detail. The first three were Swiss watches with the still prototype quartz Beta 21 caliber, a superior technology. Seiko overtook all their mechanical rivals. Curiously enough, this was the last year that the competition was held in Geneva, thus ending a long tradition of competition in Switzerland.

Manufacturers used to send high beating movements to the contests, very high performance... but fragile. Something like a Formula 1, that runs a lot but has a fair reliability to finish the races. Some gauges were Hi-Beat, to have more frequency, something that compromises the power reserve and lubrication. There were only a few exceptions that made them commercially available. One was Girard Perregaux, with his 32A calibre, another Zenith with his 135...


...and the other was Seiko. With the watch I wanted to talk about from the beginning. The 45GS VFA. Launched in 1969, along with the first quartz and the first automatic chronograph. The prodigious year of the firm.

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And, here's the amazing. The VFA (Very Fine Adjusted) had a stated accuracy of (-2, +2) seconds per day, 1 minute per month, which Seiko guaranteed for the first two years. That was a record for a commercial watch.

Half a century ago, Seiko was laughing at the Omega METAS, and the Rolex Super-Mega-Hyperlative Chronometer.


In 2009, chronometry competitions were organized again, taking up the tradition of the 19th and 20th centuries... and so on. The organizers of the biennial Concours international de chronométrie were the Swiss COSC, the Besançon Observatory in France and the Haute École Arc Ingénierie de Neuchatel. Among the rules of the new international competition , there was a rather curious one. It reads "All parts used to build the movement must be manufactured within Europe" .

And this year they've gone further...
http://www.concourschronometrie.org/e/home

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Re: COSC, METAS, Rolex Superlative, Seiko VFA (+2,-2)... in 1969, origin of Grand Seiko, some superquartz... and more st

Post by Conchita Turtle »

Several VFA models, derived from the main GS models, were made in a 5-year interval until 1975. The movements 6185 and 6186 (automatic) and 4580 (manual), were assembled and adjusted especially under extremely strict conditions by the best Seiko craftsmen.

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If anyone is interested in seeing them and getting to know them in detail, many are on this page. I invite you to visit it.

A Detailed History of Grand Seiko V.F.A., the Pinnacle of Japanese Chronometers



On this Japanese website was one of the most spectacular, the 6185-8000, with a lobster bracelet, and made entirely of silver and palladium alloy. No, it doesn't have the VFA logos on it. The very first ones didn't have them.

https://www.e-bigmoon.com/gallery/detail.php?id=2678

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There were also female VFAs, with smaller sizes and machines, such as this 19GS VFA. However, given the smaller size of the machine, the tolerances became "2 minutes per month", which is still impressive.

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To comment on this, the name V.F.A. was also used in 1971 on some of Seiko's first high-end quartz. The technological innovation, on the Swiss Astron or Beta 21, appeared very shortly before, was the use of a integrated circuit with CMOS semiconductor.
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It was precisely the use of CMOS technology that prompted Seiko to launch the first six-digit digital (the LC 06)... or the first digital watch with an alarm, the IC Melody. The promised accuracy was then a few stratospheric seconds per month. Equally stratospheric was its price. If we said earlier that a civil servant earned about 25k yen a month, while the mechanical V.F.A cost 100k yen in its 1972, one of the very first V.F.A quartzes cost 141,000 yen. At that time, the price of a high-end Toyota. In this 1974 ad we still see a high price of 135k yen, up from 75k for a more basic quartz.

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These quartz V.F.A. wonders, however, despite being true rarities in their day because of their high price, can be purchased at much more affordable prices in the bay today. The popularization and cheapening of quartz, which Seiko had launched on the market a little earlier, made mechanics obsolete, which were seen as something of the past. Soon after, not only did mechanical VFA become a thing of the past, but even mechanical Grand Seiko disappeared for several years, until Seiko rescued the name again in 1988... for quartz. The mechanics had to wait until 1997.
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Re: COSC, METAS, Rolex Superlative, Seiko VFA (+2,-2)... in 1969, origin of Grand Seiko, some superquartz... and more st

Post by Conchita Turtle »

Well, here would be the end of it.

It's 1991. The Swiss begin to revive mechanical watchmaking, which seemed doomed to disappear, by linking it to luxury. And at Seiko, a firm that was then almost entirely devoted to quartz, they were surprised by the positive response to an ultra-thin-winding mechanical calibre, for a commemorative watch in 1991.
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This was the germ of their interest in making high-end watches again. The following year, in 1992, they introduced the 4S35, based on a King Seiko calibre from the 1970s, which was once again a commercial success.

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Given their success, they again propose to make chronometric calibres, starting with the development of the 9S55 calibre. In 2016, they sent 50 pre-series calibres to COSC for testing, all of which passed the tests. But at Seiko they decided to return to their old, somewhat more demanding standard (+5, -3). In November 1998, it was released on the market.

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The following years saw the appearance of new variations of 9S and other calibres, both mechanical, such as quartz or Spring Drive (another novelty, perhaps another day I will prepare something...) under the submarine. GMT calibres, high beat, and a recent 8 day power reserve calibre.

But as we said, Omega and Rolex, who will be the ones to see Seiko as their competitors, have recently surpassed the Grand Seiko standard.

And at Seiko, they have recovered the V.F.A., initially on their SBGH265 model, to commemorate the 20th anniversary of GS's return. The caliber is 9S85, a variation of the high-beating 9S.

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Again, the required tolerance is 4 seconds (+3, -1). Seiko claims that they pull 34 days to verify their accuracy, twice as long as a normal GS.

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The sphere had a curious pattern with the two initials GS, evoking the logo of the Daini Seikosha factory, now Seiko Instruments.

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Because it was a platinum watch, in a commemorative series (and with a view perhaps more to collectors than to future users), the price was not cheap, 45k USD. But I imagine that it will be extended to more models. We will see what the Japanese surprise us with in the future. As we have seen, if they get into it, they do it.


Thanks for reading me.
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Re: COSC, METAS, Rolex Superlative, Seiko VFA (+2,-2)... in 1969, origin of Grand Seiko, some superquartz... and more st

Post by quincas »

Great reading. Thank you for sharing.
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Re: COSC, METAS, Rolex Superlative, Seiko VFA (+2,-2)... in 1969, origin of Grand Seiko, some superquartz... and more st

Post by Stretch44 »

Great read. Thanks. My wife literally just said, "What are reading over there?" I said, "what do you think?" And she said, "watches, no wonder you were so engrossed."
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Re: COSC, METAS, Rolex Superlative, Seiko VFA (+2,-2)... in 1969, origin of Grand Seiko, some superquartz... and more st

Post by watchpalooza »

Stretch44 wrote: Fri Dec 27, 2019 8:43 pm Great read. Thanks. My wife literally just said, "What are reading over there?" I said, "what do you think?" And she said, "watches, no wonder you were so engrossed."
Awwww...your's still asks!
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Re: COSC, METAS, Rolex Superlative, Seiko VFA (+2,-2)... in 1969, origin of Grand Seiko, some superquartz... and more st

Post by Dub Rubb »

Stretch44 wrote:Great read. Thanks. My wife literally just said, "What are reading over there?" I said, "what do you think?" And she said, "watches, no wonder you were so engrossed."
[emoji3][emoji3]
watchpalooza wrote:
Stretch44 wrote: Fri Dec 27, 2019 8:43 pm Great read. Thanks. My wife literally just said, "What are reading over there?" I said, "what do you think?" And she said, "watches, no wonder you were so engrossed."
Awwww...your's still asks!
[emoji23][emoji23][emoji23]

That's awesome. And thanks for the great read. In case you guys haven't noticed, I kinda like Seikos, so I really enjoy hearing their history.

Sent from my LG-M322 using Tapatalk

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Re: COSC, METAS, Rolex Superlative, Seiko VFA (+2,-2)... in 1969, origin of Grand Seiko, some superquartz... and more st

Post by Split-Time »

Very interesting. Thank you for putting together and sharing.
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Re: COSC, METAS, Rolex Superlative, Seiko VFA (+2,-2)... in 1969, origin of Grand Seiko, some superquartz... and more st

Post by Conchita Turtle »

Interesting article about the Seiko design keys: Grand Seiko and Credor, the two faces of the same coin
https://www.ikigai-watches.com/grand-se ... -coin/5259

I found this photo very intriguing in which you can see the evolution from Seiko Marvel to the first GS.
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