watch

A watch is a timepiece that is to be worn on a person, as opposed to a clock which is not. The term now usually refers to a wristwatch, which is worn on the wrist with a strap, while a pocketwatch, the common type before World War I, is carried in a pocket and often has an attached chain to lift it out. Watches evolved in the 1600s from spring powered clocks, which appeared in the 1400s. In addition to the time, modern watches often display the day, date, month and year, and electronic watches may have many other functions.

The most common type of watch is the wristwatch, worn on the wrist and fastened with a watchband made of leather, nylon or other plastics (then called strap), metal links (called bracelet) or even ceramic. Before the inexpensive miniaturization that became possible in the 20th century, most watches were pocket watches, which had covers and were carried separately, often in a pocket and attached to a watch chain or watch fob.

In the 21st century, technological advances in metallurgy, composite materials development and physical vapor deposition greatly influence watch design and manufacturing. Solid stainless steel, titanium, tungsten carbide, carbon fiber, high-tech ceramic and ion plating processes dominate a considerable market share of today's modern watch-making industry. Sapphire crystals are often incorporated to complement and enhance the durability of a quality watch.

Most inexpensive and medium-priced watches used mainly for timekeeping are electronic watches with quartz movements. The most accurate watches have radio-controlled movements that are miniaturized, portable versions of radio clocks. Expensive, collectible watches valued more for their workmanship and aesthetic appeal than for simple timekeeping, often have purely mechanical movements and are powered by springs, even though mechanical movements are less accurate than more affordable quartz movements.

In the 15th century, navigation and mapping increased the desire for portability in timekeeping. The latitude could be measured by looking at the stars, but the only way a ship could measure its longitude was by comparing the midday (high noon) time of the local longitude to that of a European meridian (usually Paris or Greenwich)—a time kept on a shipboard clock. However, the process was notoriously unreliable until the introduction of John Harrison's marine chronometer. For that reason, most maps from the 15th century through the 19th century have precise latitudes but distorted longitudes.

The first reasonably accurate mechanical clocks measured time with simple weighted pendulums, which are unworkable when irregular movement of the fulcrum occur whether at sea or in watches. The invention of a spring mechanism was crucial for portable clocks. In Tudor England, the development of "pocket-clockes" was enabled by the development of reliable springs and escapement mechanisms, which allowed clockmakers to compress a timekeeping device into a small, portable compartment.

In 1524, Peter Henlein created the first pocket watch. It is rumored that Henry VIII (the portrait of Henry VIII at this link shows the medallion thought to be the back of his watch) had a pocket clock which he kept on a chain around his neck. However, these watches only had an hour hand—a minute hand would have been useless because of the inaccuracy of the watch mechanism. Eventually, miniaturization of these spring-based designs allowed for accurate portable timepieces (marine chronometers) which worked well even at sea.

In 1850, Aaron Lufkin Dennison founded Waltham Watch Company, which was the pioneer of the industrial manufacturing of pocket watches with interchangeable parts, the American System of Watch Manufacturing.

Breguet developed the first self-winding watch known as the perpetual in 1780.

Parts
The first two are key mechanisms within any mechanical watch of classical design; the third is optional:

The escapement – a mechanism that controls and limits the unwinding of the watch, converting what would otherwise be a simple unwinding, into a controlled and periodic energy release. The escapement does this by interlocking with a gear in a simple manner that switches between a "driven" and a "free" state, with abrupt locking at each end of the cycle. The escapement also for the same reason produces the ticking noise characteristic of mechanical watches.

The balance wheel together with the balance spring(also known as Hairspring) – these form a simple harmonic oscillator, which controls the motion of the gear system of the watch in a manner analogous to the pendulum of a pendulum clock. This is possible because the moment of inertia of the balance wheel is fixed, and the wheel as a whole provides a regular motion of known period.

The tourbillon – a rotating frame for the escapement. It is intended to cancel out or reduce the effects of bias to the timekeeping of gravitational origin, which might result from the watch being kept in a particular position for much of the day. It is technically very challenging to create a high quality tourbillon, and those made by specialists and found in prestige watches are often very highly valued.

NB: the pin-lever (also called Rosskopf) movement, as per the name of its inventor: Georges Frederic Roskopf: This cheaper version of the fully levered movement had been manufactured in huge quanties by many Swiss Manufacturers as well as Timex, has been replaced by Quartz movements.

Watch movements
A movement in watchmaking is the mechanism that measures the passage of time and displays the current time (and possibly other information including date, month and day). Movements may be entirely mechanical, entirely electronic (potentially with no moving parts), or a blend of the two. Most watches intended mainly for timekeeping today have electronic movements, with mechanical hands on the face of the watch indicating the time.

Mechanical movements

Detail of Molnija movement.Purely mechanical watches are still popular, although they are most commonly seen among medium priced watches such as Fortis, Omega, Rolex and TAG Heuer and expensive watches like Patek Phillipe, Vacheron Constantin, Ulysse Nardin and Audemars Piguet. Their superb craftsmanship accounts for much of the attraction of purely mechanical watches. Compared to electronic movements, mechanical watches are inaccurate, often with errors of seconds per day. They are frequently sensitive to position and temperature, they are costly to produce, they require regular maintenance and adjustment, and they are more prone to failure.

Generally speaking, inexpensive and moderately priced timepieces with electronic movements now provide most users with timekeeping more accurate than the most expensive Rolex or Patek Phillipe. The most expensive, diamond encrusted Rolex contains a similar movement as its less expensive C.O.S.C rated brethren and all modern models can keep time to within 1 second a day. However, in recent times there has been less emphasis on one's watch for time precision as many people now carry multiple devices that will tell them the time accurately such as mobile phones, PDAs and laptops, these finely crafted mechanical watches have remained popular as precision time pieces and in many cases more so because of their aesthetic value as jewellery.

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