Armin Frei

Nationality: Swiss

Early training: PhD. ETH Zurich

Swiss watch industry: Electrical Engineer, Inventor

Main achievements: Frei can be credited to having been the first engineer in Switzerland, and most probably worldwide, to have intentionally focused his research to the application of a quartz regulator for use in wristwatches. Armin Frei was among the first engineers to be recruited by Roger Wellinger to start their work at the CEH in Neuchâtel on an all Swiss concurring system to the American ‘Accutron’.

Already in 1964 Frei discussed the use of tuning fork shaped quartz elements to be used in wrist watch sized calibers, of which internal CEH documents exist. Unfortunately his efforts to construct such tuning fork shaped quartzes by hand failed and he redirected his interest to bar shaped quartzes (1).

By 1965 he managed, with the help of his friend Rolf Lochinger, to construct the worldwide first quartz resonator equipped with primitive electronic frequency division provided by Lochinger. This bipolar, integrated division module was the first such IC outside of the USA. It would become the base on which further developments were built. Unfortunately Frei left the CEH before ‘Beta 1’, the worlds first wristwatch quartz caliber, was finalised (1, 2).

Picture credit: Quartzwristwatch

Ref.:

1. Quartzwristwatch
2. Personal comunication with a former Executive Vice-President of Ebauches SA, in charge of Research & Engineering.