Mechanical watch

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A Typical 1887 American Watch Company "Waltham" "Bond-Street" Movement

The basic meaning of a mechanical watch points to a watch having a "metal, operational-base" running method. A mechanical watch runs either with a mainspring format for a "power" source, or a fusee chain-driven format for substituting as a mainspring. Both of these watches use an escapement, a balance wheel, minute-hour-second escapement gears, a time-set lever-set formatting method, and share similar characteristics with each other.

Mechanical watches were very popular back from early on, especially from the 1500s, when the Chronometer was created, and therefore "perfecting" the movement of the watch industry. Watches from the early 1500s to the early 1800s featured the chain-driven fusee movement, which was the only means for substitution of a mainspring format back in the time. The fusees were very brittle, were very easy to break, and often featured many, many problems, especially inaccuracy of timekeeping when the fusee chain became loose or lost its velocity after the lack of maintenance.

Mainsprings began to become popular as technological stepping stones improved, and newer designs came to place in the industry, perfecting the movement of a typical mechanical watch. With the new mainspring, the fusee maintenance and chain-loosening problems were now gone, a mainspring-operated watch does not have to be serviced as much as the fusee, and also other time-keeping problems were solved with the evolution of the Mainspring. Mainspring watches were most popular from the 1850s to the 1970s before the evolution of the Quartz Digital operation method came into place.

As Manual-wound mechanical watches became less popular and less favored in the 1960s, watch design and industrialists came out with the Automatic Watch Movement. Whereas a mechanically-wound watch must be wound with the pendant or a levered setting, an Automatic watch does not require to be wound by the pendant, but by simply shaking the watch winds the watch automatically. The interior of an Automatic Watch houses a swivelling metal or brass "plate", that swivels on its axes when the watch is shaken horizontally. An Automatic watch may come in handy if you do not want to constantly wind a watch manually, because it simply winds itself from its position on your wrist or your arm.