People think that Seiko, with the Astron (1969) was the cause of what the Swiss call the Quartz Crisis. It's not. Both the Astron and the Swiss Beta 21 were pretty primitive. Girard-Perregaux, which is, of course, as Swiss as Swiss gets, brought the first modern quartz watch to the market with the GP350 movement in 1971. Just a few years later, in 1978, Ebel demonstrated that expensive Swiss quartz watches were perfectly marketable if they were styled and marketed correctly. That's a bridge Seiko struggled to cross. The Astron was expensive and that's one reason they are so collectible--very few were sold. Seiko took a long time to be able to produce cheap quartz watches that could compete with their cheap mechanical watches.
And Hamilton, when it was still an American company, brought out their skunk-works Pulsar QED in 1971 (the version I pictured upthread was the second version, the QED II, which came out in 1975, and it was made after Hamilton was bought by SSIH--aka Omega/Tissot). Seiko bought the Pulsar brand name from them sometime after that.
Here's a Hamilton Pulsar QED from 1971:
The technology was very cool for the day. The button on the side did not penetrate the potted and waterproof electronics, it merely moved a small magnet close enough to actuate a reed switch inside the potted module. Likewise, setting used a small magnet (held in a special compartment in the bracelet) that was placed in a cavity on the back of the way to actuate other reed switches that put it into setting mode. Later versions were not as cool (or as expensive). This watch was a coupla grand in 1971, about the same price as the first Astron, but far superior. The GP, however, used mechanical hands to provide a traditional analog display. These were expensive watches, and would not have presented a crisis to the Swiss industry, who could make expensive quartz watches with a lot more style than could Seiko.
About that same time--1975--Swiss companies were coming out with beautifully designed space-age-design quartz watches like the Zenith Time Command:
Note that Montres Zenith SA of Le Locle was in no way related to Zenith Radio Corporation until 1972, when the latter purchased the former to get in on the watch fun. The watch company was far older and completely unrelated, sharing the brand name only by coincidence. Their ownership by the American Zenith Radio nearly killed them, too. Zenith Radio (now Zenith Electronics) couldn't make those cool Time Command watches for cheap enough to support a retail price less than about $500, and they gave it up in 1978 and sold the Swiss Zenith to Dixi Machine, who in turn sold it to LVMH in the 90's. Zenith Watch Company soldiers on, making expensive (watch people call them "mid-priced") and superb mechanical watches, who made the movements in the Ebel chronographs that Frank and I have pictured.
The crisis was
cheap quartz watches--taking advantage of the mass-production ease of electronics. Texas Instruments was the first to point the way in 1975. Their first model sold for $125, but within a year they were selling them in plastic cases direct to consumers for $40. By 1978, TI was selling them for ten bucks, which was the first time they became cheaper than the cheapest mechanical watches.
Here's a TI digital watch from 1975:
TI destroyed the competition like the Hamilton QED and because of it the Zenith Time Command never had a chance.
Even Seiko could not compete at that level, and their cheapest watches were mechanical Seiko 5's (just as Citizen had the Citizen 7 in the same price category). Watch writers talk about how Seiko owned the market in the 70's, but I think the real change agent of that time was Casio. By the early 80's, Casios were suited to the impecunious, while Seiko were considered step-up models.
Casio's first digital watch used LCD technology was under fiddy bucks and didn't eat batteries the way LED watches did. Here's the first Casiotron, from 1974, but their first breakthrough model was the X-1 from 1976, which included a stopwatch, and the model that followed, which included a calculator.
Casio, a maker of digital calculators, was willing to commit to the timepiece market (unlike TI) and the result was they more than anyone changed expectations about the price of watches in general and quartz watches in particular. This had the effect of destroying the cheap pin-lever-escapement mechanical watches that were the cash cow for the Swiss industry (and also the American industry at the low end, led by Timex), and that large chunk of Swiss production vanished as a result.
And it really forced the Swiss to get creative about what would sell at high prices (example, Ebel again, as mentioned at the top, GP, Omega, and others like them). The Swiss had to rethink how to make cheap watches that would be marketable and they broke through that barrier with the S'watch, but that didn't happen until 1983.
Here's an Ebel Sport Classic from 1978--more style than technology, though the quartz movement was beautifully made and eventually Ebel became a full manufacture of quartz movements. Ebel became one of the top five Swiss watch companies in the 80's because they knew how to make and sell expensive quartz watches (they taught that skill to Cartier, too, and made most Cartier watches during that period.)
The natural result was that the Swiss were forced to move upmarket and left the low end to companies like Casio (Seiko always supported all price points across its vast corporate landscape, though their premium mechanical and quartz watches are not made in the same factories as their inexpensive quartz watches, which are more Seiko-Epson than Seiko Watch Company of old.) Citizen is a sleeper in this equation, but they have emerged as a real powerhouse more recently. They own several Swiss brands, including some high-end brands like Arnold & Co. and Graham, and including the La Joux Perret manufacture that makes movements for those brands.
Casio doubled down on digital display technology more than any other company, and from that grew watches that, like that first Pulsar, could take advantage of potted electronics to be really durable in rough environments. The G-Shock grew from that, and gave Casio a market niche they have owned ever since. The first G-Shock came out in 1983, the same year as the S'Watch:
Transitioning Casio quartz watches back to mechanical analog displays (driven by quartz-regulated stepper motors) came later, but the heart of the G-Shock line has always been the indestructible LCD digital display.
So, those Casio watches are an important part of the history of watches, low price notwithstanding. Lots of watch collectors with high-end watches in their collections think nothing of having at least one G-Shock.
Rick "sorry for the ramble" Denney
lol. I'm very pleased with all three! The G-Shock feels like a little tank. I was shocked at how big the Duro is...that is a serious wrist accoutrement! It's pretty damn nice for $75cdn...and that blue one there is a cheapy I bought on a whim for $32cdn but I really like it! It's very light and comfortable to wear. 
