How Mechanical Watches Work

[iacas]

Mechanical Watch – Bartosz Ciechanowski

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Interactive article explaining how a mechanical watch works.

This is a loooong article.

Same guy who did this:

[TourSpoon]

The old saying, "I asked him for the time and he told me how to build a clock," comes to mind.  That was a long article but well done. Hard to believe we have been building watches for centuries! 

[iacas]

22 minutes ago, TourSpoon said:

The old saying, "I asked him for the time and he told me how to build a clock," comes to mind.  That was a long article but well done. Hard to believe we have been building watches for centuries! 

It's impressive stuff, really.

[saevel25]

3 hours ago, iacas said:

It's impressive stuff, really.

I agree. 

Quote

From Wikipedia,

towards the end of the 18th century, the lever escapement (invented by Thomas Mudge in 1755) was put into limited production by a handful of makers including Josiah Emery (a Swiss based in London) and Abraham-Louis Breguet. With this, a domestic watch could keep time to within a minute a day. Lever watches became common after about 1820, and this type is still used in most mechanical watches today.

It’s amazing that back in the mid to late 1700’s the ability to make pocket watches that could be accurate to with in 1 minute in a 24 hour cycle. 

[billchao]

Thanks for sharing. I’ll save this for later.

[saevel25]

The YouTube algorithm gave me this video. He is servicing/restoring a 1920-ish pocket watch.