In watches
In 1960, The Accutron, an electromechanical watch developed by Max Hetzel, use a 360 hertz steel tuning fork powered by a battery a its timekeeping element. The fork allowed it to achieve greater accuracy than conventional balance wheel watches. You can hear the sound of the tuning fork if you place it close to your ear.
The modern quartz watches uses a quartz crystal to keep time but it has a shape of a tuning fork. The piezoelectric properties of quartz cause the quartz tuning fork to generate a pulsed electrical current as it resonates. Today’s most watches resonate at 215 = 32,768 Hz, which is above the range of human hearing.
Medical uses
(Hearing test)
An alternative to the usual A440 diatonic scale is that of philosophical or scientific pitch with standard pitch of C512. According to Rayleigh, the scale was used by physicists and acoustic instrument makers. The tuning fork that John Shore gave to Handel gives a pitch of C512.
Tuning forks, usually C512, are used by medical practitioners to assess a patient's hearing. Lower-pitched ones (usually C128) are also used to check vibration sense as part of the examination of the peripheral nervous system.
Tuning forks also play a role in several alternative medicine modalities, such as sonopuncture and polarity therapy.
Radar gun calibration
A radar gun is usually calibrated with tuning forks, which purpose is to measure the speed of cars of balls in sports. Instead of the frequency, these forks are labeled with the calibration speed and radar band for which they are calibrated.
Doubled and H-type of tuning forks are used for tactical-grade Vibrating Structure Gyroscopes like QuapasonTM and different types of MEMS