The SEIKO Quartz Astron was the world's first quartz watch. Released on Christmas Day, 1969, the Quartz Astron  was over 100 times more accurate than its mechanical counterparts. Never before in the history of timekeeping had such an advance been made.The accuracy of general mechanical wristwatches of the day was to ±15-20 seconds a day, and it was assumed that a degree of inaccuracy in wristwatches was unavoidable. With its accuracy of ± 0.2 seconds per day, the Quartz Astron redefined the accuracy of the wristwatch for ever. The Quartz Astron also delivered a huge advance in ease of use. With a miniature battery delivering a running time of more than a year, the watch would remain accurate for more than 10 times longer than most mechanical watches.

The birth of such an epoch-making watch had a far-reaching effect throughout the world; it placed SEIKO among the world's leading brands and made it  the unquestioned leader in high-technology watchmaking.

When it was decided that SEIKO would be the Official Timekeeper of the Tokyo Olympic Games in 1964, the technology team at Suwa Seikosha embarked on the development of a handheld quartz chronometer that could be used for the competitions. As early as 1958, a quartz master clock had been produced for use by broadcasters who wanted to deliver accurate time to their viewers, but it was huge – the size of a full sized locker. The Olympic project provided the SEIKO engineers with a clear goal, to miniaturise this clock to a size that could be carried around in one hand, so that times could be measured during the Games. By 1963, success had been achieved. The SEIKO hand-held quartz timekeeper was employed as the timekeeping device for long distance athletics events at the Tokyo Games, and in the following year, it was sold commercially as the QC-951 crystal chronometer.
To further miniaturize this to wristwatch size, innovative technological advances were made in every area, most notably in the crystal oscillator, the motor and the IC. The Quartz Astron was not only the first quartz watch, but its technological characteristics, including the open-style step motor and the tuning fork shape for the crystal became standard for the industry. Even today, the advances that SEIKO made in the 1960's still define quartz watchmaking in every important respect.
Over the past 40 years, quartz technology has moved beyond watches, and has become the industrial standard for literally hundreds of consumer products, from  mobile phones to computers. And the IC technology that SEIKO invented is utilized in the very latest image-capture systems.

By giving the world access to these technologies, SEIKO made an important contribution to many industries, a fact recognized in 2004, when SEIKO received the IEEE Milestone Award for its historic achievements in the fields of electric and electronic technology in honor of its great contribution.

The Quartz Astron is just one of SEIKO's many industry-leading technologies. From 1895, when SEIKO made its first mechanical watch to the present day when Spring Drive is perhaps the most advanced watch in the world, SEIKO has created many world first timepieces.

Today, SEIKO is the only ‘manufacture' in the world to master the four timekeeping technologies – mechanical, quartz, Kinetic and Spring Drive”.