Watch tech

Well a few Omegas have that co-axial escapement and uh there's Spring Drive. Supposedly the lubricants are better. Sadly, watches have lost the ability to be compact for some reason.

Mechanical watches are an anachronism, meaning they are functionally obsolete. The current version is the Apple Watch.

Therefore the term "innovation" is a bit of an oxymoron when it comes to mechanical watches. You can only innovate so much, before it is not the "real thing" anymore. Seiko is pushing the envelope with the Spring Drive, but it may already be a step too far.

You could argue that a random $500 dollar microbrand has a better build finish etc than I 50 year old Rolex that is worth $10k..

That's technology for you.

I have the 42mm because it's the actual Interstellar prop with the eureka code on the seconds hand

Agreed

Was this comment meant for the Hamilton Murph post..?

Two words: Flame Fusion

Kinetic

Ecodrive

Negative displays on digital

Silicone balance spring

New dial materials

More machine made parts & even assembly (see @tomtom88 reply)

I would have thought sapphire crystals were a more recent development, but it is about 90 years old

One of the big Selita employees in an interview said something along the lines of “ you can only go so far until you hit quartz. I mean, we’re perfecting steam engines.”

Quartz and Accutron’s stuff are at the cutting edge, but no watch “enthusiast” wants to hear a lick of it because of the snobbish “but it’s Quartz” attitude

Watches are very interesting bec the best movement (quartz, maybe thermocompensated quartz) isn’t the dominant technology. As an analogy, it would be like a world where CRT TVs were dominant even after LED TVs are readily available and are cheaper.

That’s not to say there hasn’t been any advances in tech. Modern mechanical movements are (I believe) better than old mechanical movements afterall. But I think the biggest improvement is in production which has allowed microbrands (think the Erebus Ascent) to launch watches at price points that would have been impossible to do in the past (especially if you adjust for inflation).

That first part is just not true. Quartz is overwhelmingly dominant. Maybe not in luxury, but for far and away it is king.

That’s really interesting. Reminds me of vinyl popularity vs streaming too…perhaps impossible to address progress “rationally” then.?!?

If you are talking about timing, we went from sundials to gravity pendulums, to steel springs oscillators, to quartz+ silicon, to oven controlled stabilized silicon MEMS.

Once our most accurate clocks were used as marine chronometers to navigate the globe.

Now our timing is so accurate that we can time compensate relativistic effects on GPS signals to get better navigation.

Mechanical watches ceased to become a platform for true technical innovation during the Quartz Crisis.

Seems so, I never really gave it much thought but it’s cool to learn something new :).

Not all quartz are created equal. Here's an experiment. Disable your phone WiFi and Cell for 1 weekend and see how much the time drifts from the atomic time standard.

There are high quality quartz resonators in your phone, but they are not always on due to power. The real time clock is low power and low accuracy.

Of course, the dime store quartz watches have less accurate quartz crystals as well.

Not only a battery, but since it has a computer processor inside it, it has a quartz crystal for generating the square wave used for the processor latches, memory reads and writes, etc. The difference is the oscillating frequency. For computers it is much higher than 32768 Hz.

Hey Hippo,

You know prior to this thread, I never really gave much thought how my phone keeps time even when I’m on airplane mode e.g. when I’m flying. I didn’t realize it also has a quartz resonator inside. Very cool stuff, thanks for insight!

Hey Michael, I noticed you’re a software engineer. No wonder you have a good grasp of the tech. 🤝

I am going to assume the higher frequency leads to more accurate timekeeping?

I’d say finishing and materials technology?

The timekeeping aspect hasn’t changed too much.

You can get a lot of titanium, ceramic, forged carbon and even full sapphire cases these days.

In all honesty; a Tissot from today is ten times the watch a Rolex was in the 70s. While the materials didn’t get better, manufacturing sure did! Also, due to globalisation it’s easier and cheaper to source them today. Not to forget movements in general! Silicon Hairsprongs and components are a relatively new invention/discovery; even if the superlative chronometer existed back then but anti magnetism and shock resistance used to be buzzwords that didn’t compare to performance these days!

Yes, your assumption is correct. Higher frequency makes for more accurate watch. That is why Bulova Precisionist, which runs at 262 KHz can achieve 10sec/year accuracy. But another advantage that these wearable smart devices, like Apple watch have is that they are always connected to the phone, which is connected to the internet. The time on these devices is updated from a central time server using special protocol called Network Time Protocol (NTP) at least once a day. So the device updates its time possibly one or more times a day. This is what makes those devices much more accurate.

When I think of watches, more often than not, I think of automatic or manual wind watches.

I enjoy all kinds of watches: spring drive, solar, apple watch, the shebang. But the main attraction for me with auto and manual winders is that the hark back to an older era. Not only that, but even today the pace of change with mechanical movement is glacial, if at there is any advancement at all.

I like the other stuff too, different watch materials, different construction techniques or whatever it may be. More than any of that though, is the movement. If I learn something about the movement today, it's likely to be the same thing in 10 or 20 years. Can't really say that about a lot of items these days when you learn something then that knowle5is out of date within a year.

As a hobbyist watchmaker, we are truly spoilt to have modern synthetic lubricants. Their predecessors were utter crap that would stop being, well... lubricants under almost any conditions.

I have two NOS watches from the '70s. Neither of them have ever been serviced and they both run well. Sitting still for three months would have needed a watchmaker's touch with old lubricants, let alone fifty years. This is why I always say a watch only needs a service when it stops running well.

Ummm…Apple Watch (I mean if we are talking about things on your wrist that can tell the most accurate time…)

Thanks,didn’t know that.

It’s not snobbish. Quartz watching offer zero mechanical entertainment on the dial side.

I don’t really count that one because it’s a smart phone extension

Most mechanical watches don’t give you I didn’t dial window into the movement, either. They can however offer tricks with their handsets The mechanical watches could only dream of. There is more to a watch than the visual entertainment its movement provides