The Rapid Collapse of the Swedish Mechanical Calculator Industry

[Jim Horn]

I learned about automatic watches a few years ago and was immediately impressed. But, being entirely mechanical, their actual accuracy is far less than quartz movement watches. So I looked for the best of both and settled for the Seiko Kinetic series as an acceptable compromise between performance, robustness and price. Further, I found an non-operating one on a Goodwill auction which I won for US$39. By purchasing a watch tool set and a replacement rechargeable "power cell", I soon had it working fine for a total out-of-pocket $105 compared to a new price of over $400. It has served me well now for years with a drift rate of under 200ms per day. No battery to replace ever and it does have the windowed back along with 100M waterproofness. Ganz schön!