zOwie Omega Discussion Forum

From a scientific/engineering point of view, I can see the interest in quartz. I'm not sure the quartz crystals for watches come naturally or are grown in labs somewhere.

I do find the story told in Longitude fascinating. It lays out the importance of timekeeping to our society and endevours. What's interesting to me is how the conceps of determining accurate position of longitude, based on time is, still how we determine our location on this planet. GPS depends on very very accurate timekeeping as achieved by Atomic Clocks.