Sound generating circuit for timepiece

Claim 1

A sound generating circuit for a timepiece comprising: a sound base signal generator which feeds out sound base signals having a certain frequency; a programmable divider with a plurality of different selectable dividing ratios, and which divides said sound base signals at a desired dividing ratio to output sound signals, said divider being responsive to a dividing ratio selecting counter; a sound interval generator which feeds out first sound interval base signals and second sound interval base signals; said dividing ratio selecting counter being composed of: a repeating cycle counter which repeatedly counts said second sound interval base signals in order to determine the maximum dividing ratio of said programmable divider in accordance with the count value of the repeating cycle counter; and a programmable counter which determines the dividing ratio of said programmable divider from maximum to minimum, and determines sound intervals by means of counting the first sound interval base signals, said maximum dividing ratio is determined by presetting the count value of said repeating cycle counter, and said minimum dividing ratio is determined by the instantaneous count value of the programmable counter when said programmable counter is counted up; and a sound producer which drives sounding elements in accordance with the sound signals of said programmable divider; whereby sounding action is performed by decreasing the frequency of said sound signals from maximum to minimum by means of increasing the dividing ratio of said programmable divider and changing the frequency of said sound signals from minimum to maximum when said frequency reaches minimum frequency by means of changing the dividing ratio of said programmable divider, said sounding action being performed cyclically and repeatedly.