How To Buy A Watch, Pt. 1

Before we even ask the question, “Why are you buying a watch?” let’s first look at watches and their history and let’s make some distinctions between the choices you’ll have when buying a watch.

There are two basic kinds of watches, mechanical and battery powered, with a few variations of these two basic kinds, as follows:

• Mechanical watches with manual movements

• Mechanical watches with automatic movements

• Mechanical watches powered by battery

• Battery powered watches regulated by a tuning fork

• Battery powered watches regulated by a quartz crystal

• Battery powered quartz watches powered by rotor/capacitor (kinetic)

• Battery powered quartz watches powered by light (solar)

The history of watch making is rich and varied, and goes back to the 1500s. (For further great reading on the history of watches go here.) Watches of course evolved from clocks and are really just small clocks. The original clocks, many of which still exist today, were mechanical in that they consisted of mechanical parts such as wheels, gears, levers, cams, springs and so on, much like an automobile, only very, very small. Watchmakers made these complex mechanical clocks fit on a wrist or in a pocket by making them even smaller. In mechanical watches, whether wound by hand (manual) or wound by rotor (automatic), the motive power comes from the energy released when a spring is wound and tightened and allowed to slowly unwind. It’s really quite brilliant when you think about it: a spring slowly unwinding is used to move other parts and the configuration and design of those parts regulate the movement of two or three hands in a circle around a dial. Imagine the trial and error original clockmakers endured, hundreds of years ago, to find the way to make a clock accurate enough to be of any use. Over the generations mechanical watches have been improved, refined and advanced technologically along with improvements in precision tools and manufacturing methods and better steel. For higher accuracy and longevity jewels are commonly used as bearings in higher quality mechanical watches.

The very first wristwatch was invented in 1868 by Patek Philippe, mostly as piece of jewelry as the watch was not functionally accurate, but soon thereafter a whole new industry was born. By the late 19^th century many of the brands we know today had established themselves either in Europe (mostly Switzerland) or in the United States. These brands include, Tissot, Omega, Rolex, Bulova, International Watch Company, Timex, and many others.

While watchmakers continued to improve upon their product, the watch remained basically the same until the advent of the self-winding or automatic watch soon after World War I when John Harwood devised the first rotor winding watch mechanism commonly known as the ”bumper” automatic. It had a weighted rotor attached to the winding mechanism that would rotate about 180° and hit bumper springs that would send it back in the other direction. But it only wound the watch when rotating in one direction. This new improvement allowed a watch to be worn without regular winding and had a reserve power of up to 12 hours when fully wound. These 'Bumper' watches became the first successful commercially produced watches.

Then, in 1930 Rolex improved Harwood’s design so the weighted rotor could now rotate a full 360° and Rolex also developed a new mainspring that allowed the watch to run up to 36 hours when not being worn and fully wound. By the 1960s these self-winding watches became the standard in quality watches.

The making of mechanical watches in the past, much as today, required great mechanical skills, extensive knowledge, and years of training. If you’ve ever seen the inside of a mechanical watch you know why: many tiny parts, screws and springs all have to be assembled with perfection for the watch to operate properly. And all must be assembled in a very clean and dust-free environment. The mechanical watch industry was healthy and growing throughout the first half of the 20^th century until the advent of the battery-powered watch that first appeared in 1957 and nearly brought mechanical watches to a sudden, devastating end with the invention of the quartz watch in the 1970s. (For more on automatic watches go here.)

I have no doubt that mechanical watches would be gone completely as far as new products go, much the way of 8 track tapes and BetaVision, if not for some clever marketing. But unlike 8 track tapes, automatic watches have made an astounding comeback, similar in a way to the comeback of vinyl LP records, although far more extensive and with a far larger market. Why either of these technologies are still around is open to discussion, for there is little logic in either case. As for automatic watches, if nothing else, you might chalk their renewed success up to some sort of romantic appeal, perhaps a nostalgia for things of the past, things of an analog nature rather than digital, an attraction based perhaps solely on a love of old fashioned crafts and skills. With LPs it’s easy to make the argument that they sound better compared to CDs because individual hearing can vary widely and what sounds good to one person may not necessarily be even noticeable to another. It’s very subjective. On the other hand, with watches you can clearly test the accuracy of different watches and the results are irrefutable. Quartz is a hands-down winner when it comes to accuracy.

Quartz technology has been around since the late 1920s, but it wasn’t until the development of semiconductors and digital logic boards in the 1960s that quartz became usable in very small devices like a wristwatch. Quartz watches were briefly preceded by several earlier electric watches that used a battery to power the mechanical movement through the use of a traditional balance wheel or tuning fork with an electromechanical solenoid. The most famous of these is the Bulova Accutron that was NASA’s choice for timekeeping devices on the first space mission, although the honor of the first watch in space went to Omega’s certified chronometer, an automatic mechanical watch. Other notable electric watches of the past include models by Hamilton, Bulova and others. (For more on electric watches, go here.) However, Accutron tuning fork watches were a huge step forward in timekeeping accuracy. Still and yet these electric watches were not as accurate nor as durable as the quartz watch to come, mainly due to the reliance on moving parts. The quartz watch effectively eliminated all the mechanical parts other than the hands.

From Wikipedia:

“The world's first analog quartz wristwatches were developed in 1967: the Beta 21 revealed by the Centre Electronique Horloger (CEH) in Neuchâtel Switzerland,[6] and the prototype of the Astron revealed by Seiko in Japan.[7]

In 1969, Seiko produced the world's first quartz wristwatch, the Astron.[7] The inherent accuracy and low cost of production has resulted in the proliferation of quartz clocks and watches since that time. By the 1980s quartz technology had taken over applications such as kitchen timers, alarm clocks, bank vault time locks, and time fuzes on munitions, from earlier mechanical balance wheel movements.

Quartz timepiece production has emerged from Asia, notably Hong Kong and Japan. Many traditional European clockmakers, particularly in Switzerland, Germany, France and Russia have continued to produce the less-accurate but still-popular geared timepieces.[citation needed]

Quartz wristwatches are in high demand today as they are more accurate than their mechanical counterparts; they need neither winding nor much maintenance. Light-powered and motion-powered quartz watches represent two innovative types of timepieces. Light-powered quartz watches incorporate a solar cell that transforms the light into electricity. As for the motion-powered wristwatches, they have a tiny rotor spinning in response to motion and generating electricity.[8]”

Okay, now let’s compare the two types in a very general way. Quartz watches have been around long enough for some of the existing ones to be considered “vintage” watches, but we’ll compare new against new first.

Quartz. There are several real significant differences between quartz and mechanical. The first of these, as we’ve noted, is accuracy. The cheapest quartz watch is most likely as accurate or more accurate than the most expensive mechanical watch, although the gap has narrowed since the resurgence of mechanical watches and continuing advancement of the technology and manufacturing techniques.

More to come...