This quartz crystal electronic watch eliminates watch parts formerly highly vulnerable to shock, but the quartz crystal assembly itself has high vulnerability to shock. This inventor determined that the quartz crystals resistance to shock is relatively high in all but one of its directions, and the cushioning effect of the watch's external parts is relatively high in all but one of the directions, and he produced an overall highly shock-resistant watch by orienting the quartz crystal's direction of maximum resistance to shock in the watch's direction of least cushioning.
A watch includes a housing including an apertured sound transmitting housing portion. A diaphragm is carried by the housing. A piezo electric element is carried by one surface of the diaphragm and is oscillatable in response to electrical excitation. Excitation circuitry is connected between the piezo electrical element and a power source of a watch in producing an excitation signal to oscillate the piezo electric element. The diaphragm comprises an electrically insulative material. The excitation circuit is carried by the one surface of the diaphragm, thereby eliminating the need for additional components to carry the excitation circuit.
An electronic timepiece comprising a means for generating a base signal, an electromechanical transducer to convert the base signal into mechanical motion of a rotatable shaft, only a back side chain of wheels and a driving means whereby the back side chain of wheels is directly driven by the rotatable shaft. Furthermore, the driving means is coupled to the rotatable shaft such that idling rotation of the driving means occurs without rotation of the rotatable shaft when the timepiece is being set externally.
A circuit board assembly for an electronic timepiece comprises a lower substrate having at least two recesses therein, an upper substrate superposed on the lower substrate and having at least two openings lying in registry with respective ones of the recesses, and a cover member superposed on the upper substrate hermetically covering the openings to thereby define at least two hermetically sealed compartments. An oscillator is housed in the one compartment and an IC chip housed in the other, both the oscillator and IC chip being electrically connected to electrodes printed on the upper face of the lower substrate. The compartment housing the oscillator is preferably maintained under vacuum and the compartment housing the IC chip is preferably maintained in an atmosphere of nitrogen gas or filled with resin material.
A movement construction for a small size analog quartz timepiece having a battery, a quartz crystal oscillator, an integrated circuit chip, an electro-mechanical transducer including a driving coil, stators and a rotor, and a wheel train driven by the electro-mechanical transducer to actuate a time-indicating mechanism. In one preferred embodiment, the driving coil, stators and battery are arranged in a predetermined order along the longitudinal axis of the movement construction and the integrated circuit chip is disposed to be in vertical alignment with the stators. In another preferred embodiment, the driving coil, stators and battery are arranged in spaces different from each other in a horizontal plane.
A quartz crystal vibrator unit having a passive electronic element such as a condenser is disclosed. The passive electronic element having the value to compensate the deviation of oscillating frequency from the predetermined center frequency is selected and fixed on the case of quartz crystal vibrator. Since frequency adjustment at assembling process is eliminated, work efficiency is remarkably increased.
