Degradation and contamination compensated tuning fork quartz monometer, and method to compensate for tuning quartz degradation and contamination

In the present pressure measurement process the damping signal of a tuning fork quartz manometer, which is a measure of the prevailing pressure, is so combined with the correction value proportional to the resonant frequency that a measurement result is obtained, which is independent of any contamination of the tuning fork quartz. Apart from the resonant frequency (fR) of the measuring quartz (11), preferably also the resonant frequency (fR') of a reference quartz (21) kept at constant pressure is determined. Thus, the damping signal (RS) can be corrected by a correction value proportional to the difference between the two reference frequencies (RR'-fR), which is substantially temperature-independent.