Seiko just beat the Swiss to launch the first quartz movement on Christmas day 1969. It cost the same as a family car, $1,250. Shortly afterwards a conglomerate of Swiss companies including Omega and Patek Philippe launched the Beta 21.
Girard-Perregaux went a different route, and worked with Motorola and launched their bespoke quartz calibre 350 in 1970. Whereas the Seiko and Beta 21 ran at 8,162 Hz, the Girard-Perregaux quartz ran at 32,768Hz, which every quartz watch since has adopted as the industry standard. This watch has the rare dot matrix dial and is all original as must for any GP collector .
