Fundraising campaign for watch with atomic clock has started

A watchmaker in the US state of Hawaii has developed a watch based on an atomic clock that consumers can get if they pledge $6,000 through Kickstarter. It concerns six prototypes that are on the large side.

The watch from the company Bathys Hawaii contains a compartment with a chip-scale atomic clock, the operation of which is based on the metal Cesium 133. A Cesium 133 oscillator provides 9,192,631,770 vibrations per second, with which the second corresponds to the international default. Last year, the Bathys team began combining the CSAC chip with the Ronda 509 quartz analog movement the company already uses for watches. A prototype was ready in September.

Because of all this equipment, the watch is on the large side, since a lithium battery also had to be added to keep everything running. The watch lasts 36 hours on a full battery and is accurate to 1 second per thousand years.

Alternative models of ‘atomic watches’ do not actually have the mechanism to obtain an accurate seconds in the case itself. These have radio equipment on board to receive signals from atomic clocks and in this way keep the correct time. The advantage of these types of models is that the batteries last longer and they are a lot smaller. dr. John Patterson, the man behind the watch, is aware of the size of his design. “It’s also quite funny. It is indeed very large, but it is a prototype. The first mobile phones were also huge.” The Kickstarter campaign started this week and will run for a short month. At the time of writing, no one has pledged $6,000 to get one of the six prototypes to be produced.

It doesn’t seem to be the very first watch with an integrated chip-scale atomic clock. Also Hoptroff’s No. 10 has this for example. However, the price of this smaller and more beautiful design is ‘on request’ and it is a pocket watch rather than a wristwatch.