People tend to have their own unique relationship with time. Whether they are like the white rabbit from Alice in Wonderland and are always late, prefer to observe its steady march like the tortoise who raced the rabbit, or simply watch it pass by like Rip Van Winkle, almost everyone views time through their own lenses of perception. If this seems strange, then consider the perceptions of children as compared to adults.
For children, the idea of waiting an entire week to visit a friend or welcome the arrival of a holiday is absolutely torturous. In contrast, adults won't even bat an eye at a week passing and are often surprised by the speed in which it seems to pass. When listening to a bunch of adults talk at a social function, it is pretty common to hear them comment at least once on the quick passage of time. Whether it is the rate at which children grow or the onslaught of holidays and seasonal responsibilities that seem to come and go like wildfire, there is usually at least one reference, if not more.
What's interesting to note in regards to this continually changing perception of time is the fact that in recent years there have been endeavors to continually improve the accuracy with which time can be measured and synchronized between people and organizations. A lot of these recent developments can be attributed to the development of the Statek quartz crystal technology that has allowed many timepieces to decrease in size while improving accuracy. Some of the earliest Statek quartz crystal products were shaped like a bar that was placed inside the clock.
Quartz crystals are one of the 32 types of classes called piezoelectric. These classes lack a center of symmetry and can develop a polarization when an electric field is applied. This allows a battery to apply an electric charge which causes the quartz crystal to resonate at a specific frequency which is used to regulate the timing of the movement of the clock. Though the quartz bar design was used at first, Statek developed a quartz shape that looks akin to a tuning bar. When this was done, the space taken by the Statek quartz crystal was reduced by about half and the development of smaller watches and more elegant and petite designs began to appear on the market.
Previous to this switch ladies watches were rather unheard of, but after the reduction of crystal space needed to power a watch, ladies models became much more popular on the market. The tuning fork design had been under consideration previously, but finding a method to cut and manufacture these items was very difficult and time consuming, which also made it expensive. The Statek corporation found a way to cut the quartz crystals using a photolithographic process which used chemicals to cut several crystals all at one time from larger slices of the rock.
Since multiple crystals could be cut at the same time, the expense of producing these tuning fork shaped crystals was a much more feasible addition to the production process. In conjunction with this newly shaped quartz crystal, a container which could optimize its frequency also needed to be developed. Originally, a round container was used, but this was found to waste a lot of space, so a rectangular container which would hold a recessed tuning fork design was developed which had a glass lid that would allow the crystal to be fine tuned so it would resonate as close to the appropriate frequency that would allow for the most accurate measurement of time.
These developments were precursors to the introduction of the LED technology, which still requires the use of a quartz oscillator component. Whatever the relationship each individual person may have in regards to time, the ability to accurately measure its passage is continuing to improve.
Tags:
Statek