Calibre 6412

Notes

6412 is Longines Designation for the Beta 21. The Beta 21 was the result of the work done by the Centre Électronique Horloger (CEH), a joint project of which Longines was a member, to create a swiss battery powered movement. The initiative began in 1962 and was essentially a response to the release of Bulova's Accutron movement in 1960. While not the first electronic movement (earlier attempts by Elgin and Lip, were unreliable), the Accutron was the first electronic movement that was reliable and inexpensive enough to be successfully marketed. Though engineers at CEH originally determined that Quartz movements would be unworkable because a quartz crystal small enough to fit in a wrist watch movement would vibrate too quickly for electronics of the day to keep up with, as electronics technology progressed over the 1960s, a quartz wristwatch became more feasible. The Beta 21 operates more similarly to a tuning fork movement than a modern quartz design and as a result it was difficult and expensive to produce. In all just 6,000 Beta 21 would reach the market. Longines marketed their Beta 21 watches as "Quartz-Chron". For additional information on this calibre, please visit https://grail-watch.com/2020/06/15/ceh-and-the-beta-21-the-history-of-the-first-swiss-quartz-watch/