cRaSiAn1030 wrote:
Exactly what the topic says: What are the different types of watch movements?
I would like to know about all of the different ones, but if not, then i at least wanna know what a Perpetual movement is.
Thanks,
cRaSiAn1030
I would like to know about all of the different ones, but if not, then i at least wanna know what a Perpetual movement is.
Thanks,
cRaSiAn1030
OK, I guess this one's cue Roff
Let's start with the easy stuff - quartz and mechanical. You know what that is because there was a thread from you a few days ago.
Within quartz there are is regular quartz and thermo compensated quartz. Breitling uses SuperQuartz which is their version of thermo compensated, and that uses a temperature sensor to adjust the timing to reflect the different quartz frequency at different temperatures.
There are also some strange movements based on light and stuff - but let's leave them for now.
Within mechanical watches there are manual and automatic - manual need to be wound by hand, automatics wind by movement of the wrist.
That's pretty much it for movement types, the rest are referred to as 'complications' - additional features that serve various purposes in addition to telling the time.
At the most basic level is the date and variations on that - day / date, big date (two windows or an oversized window with each digit on a separate date wheel), etc. At a similar level of complexity is the small seconds - the second hand is not central, but is on a sub dial. There is also a second timezone hand - an additional hour hand - sometimes even third or even fourth timezone indication.
Moving up slightly is the chronograph - stop watch, with additional minute and second hands, and often an hour hand. Generally these are controlled from two pushers, though sometimes only one pusher is needed.
Variations on the chronograph are the flyback chrono which resets to 0 without having to be stopped first and the rattrapante or split second chrono which has two chrono seconds hands one of which stops to indicate split times and then 'catches up' to the first one when restarted.
Additional complications are the addition of moonphase - a 29 1/2 day indicator to reflect the cycles of the moon and also the addition of month and / or week of the year. This is where we start to get closer to perpetuals.
A regular date indication assumes that there are 31 days in every month, so they need to be adjusted every time there is less than 31 days. A semi-perpetual is capable of automatically adjusting for these shorter months, but not for February 29th, so it has to be adjusted once every four years. A full perpetual takes that one step further and can adjust for February 29th, so it only needs to have the date adjusted 3 times every 400 years (the 00 years that aren't leap years). This usually has an indication on the dial of which of the four years it is, and often also a season indicator.
There are some additional complications - any number of different ones, but the most famous is the tourbillon. This was originally invented in order to try and asjust for the fact that watches ran faster or slower depending on their position - vertical or horizontal. These days the function isn't really needed, but it is seen as the ultimate demonstration of a watchmaker's ability.
There are also mechanical watches that are capable of providing an alarm, a 15 minute repeater (that rings hours and quarters) and a minute repeater (that rings hours, quarters and minutes).
That's a very quick summary, but hopefully helps.
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to what In2Deep and drax said. Great appreciation to Roff for writing all these great posts educating us.