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Quartz clocks keep time by measuring vibrations in a crystal

Warren Marrison built the first quartz crystal clock at Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1927

Quartz timepieces rely on the piezoelectric effect, where applying electricity to a tiny quartz crystal causes it to vibrate at a precise frequency of 32,768 hertz. Electronic circuits count these vibrations to track seconds accurately. Quartz technology replaced mechanical pendulum clocks and transformed wristwatches, computers, and digital timers.

Quartz-mechanical planetary watch.
Sergiy Sheyko ยท CC BY-SA 4.0 ยท licence ยท source

Where this comes from

NIST Time and Frequency Division

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Tags: clocks, quartz, timekeeping

Quartz clocks keep time by measuring vibrations in a crystal: the short answers

Where does this come from, and can I check it?
Warren Marrison built the first quartz crystal clock at Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1927. The figure is taken from NIST Time and Frequency Division, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
Is this really a technology fact?
Yes. It sits on the Technology shelf, one of 1,090 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
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