• theareciboincident@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    6 months ago

    When Seiko beat the Swiss at their own mechanical watch accuracy competitions, they decided to cancel the long running prestigious competition entirely instead of make a better watch.

    Capitalism breeds innovation!

    • BakerBagel@midwest.social
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      6 months ago

      Same with Japanese Scotch whiskeys absolutely running the table on ones from Scotland in competitions.

      • KISSmyOSFeddit@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        That’s partly because “Scotch” is a protected label. You can only call a Whisky Scotch if it was distilled with a certain technique, from certain grains, by certain companies, and matured in certain casks for a certain amount of time. All of it is regulated.

        Japanese whisky doesn’t have these limitations. They can just do whatever makes it taste good.

        • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
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          6 months ago

          Scotch whisky must be made in Scotland. Similar story with bourbon, bourbon must be made in the United States. In many places you can follow the same recipes and processes as those products, but you may not label them with those terms.

            • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
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              6 months ago

              Yes, and being distilled and aged in Scotland are both rules in that rule book. Again, same for bourbon, not all American whiskies are eligible to be labeled as bourbon.

            • BakerBagel@midwest.social
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              6 months ago

              I’m an American, and we just don’t really buy into the whole “you must be from this region to be called this item”. All sparkling wine is champagne, all peaty whiskey is scotch, and all rice liqur is sake.

          • barsoap@lemm.ee
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            6 months ago

            You can make whiskey, though. According to the EU, if you have a product distilled from grain mash and stored, at full undiluted strength, in wood casks for at least three years, you can call it whiskey. You can produce a Single Malt Whiskey, or a Rye Whiskey, anywhere you want and in fact some German Korn would qualify as whiskey as it’s aged long enough.

            Side note: Whisky wasn’t always aged. Originally it pretty much resembled Korn (though German noses have some rather strict standards when it comes to fusel alcohols that Whisky and Vodka producers don’t tend to have), then the UK prohibition came along and distillers had no choice but to let the stuff age in its casks while they fought the legislation, then they were allowed to sell the aged stuff, aged much longer than was previously common, and the rest is history.

    • Milk_Sheikh@lemm.ee
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      6 months ago

      To be fair, a crystal clock is just going to be more accurate than a movement based watch. Even the biggest watch fanboys admit that a $30 Seiko Casio outperforms the majority of mechanicals on raw accuracy.

      • KISSmyOSFeddit@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Seiko makes mechanical watches that cost under $100 and are just as precise and long-lasting as a Swiss watch.
        You’re probably thinking of Casio.

      • WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        So… The existing market leader chose to flip the table instead of admitting that their position was weaker and lower value.

        Yep, that sure sounds like the pursuit of capital instead of… innovation, quality, or any of the other attributes capitalism attempts to associate itself with.

        • Milk_Sheikh@lemm.ee
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          6 months ago

          The Neuchâtel Observatory is a publicly funded institution that certifies movements with high accuracy as chronometers. Not a private body, or a marketing tool used by a watchmaker. The same ‘competition’ is done by other observatories, all giving their own rating of a timepiece’s accuracy against a reference chronometer kept at the observatory.

          A quick search could have brought you that information_ Quartz movements beat the pants off mechanical movements, and they’re far cheaper to make, allowing the non-rich to have a decent watch with good battery life and serious accuracy. Cheap and normal mechanical watches regularly drift and lose a few seconds time over days and weeks - quartz drifts between 1-110 seconds over a year.

          • __Lost__@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            6 months ago

            They aren’t talking about quartz watches though. Seiko makes mechanical watches that were being compared to swiss mechanical watches costing way more.

      • yuri@pawb.social
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        6 months ago

        So funnily enough, the very first movement they submitted to the contest in 1963 was a quartz, and it placed tenth overall. They went with mechanical movements for subsequent competitions, and didn’t actually start placing high again until 1966 when they placed ninth overall. In ‘67 they did even better, placing fourth, but then the contest was canceled for good the next year.