'Deal of the Week' From The Watch Co.


Ancient or modern clocks, watches all very similar

Although modern clocks have changed radically from those early mechanical pendulum clocks, grown much smaller, and even turned into portable configurations like wristwatches, the basic principles and basic parts in most 20th and 21st century mechanical and electrical clocks are fundamentally the same as they were in 15th and 16th century Europe:

1. An oscillator -- Older mechanical clocks used the regular "vibration" or swing of a pendulum or balance wheel. Modern clocks use a vibrating quartz material, a tuning fork, and/or an electrical current.

2. A controller -- In mechanical clocks, this was a device that gave a "push" to the pendulum or balance wheel to replace energy lost to friction, and it also served to regulate, i.e., divide into regular measurable intervals, the motion of the pendulum or balance wheel. In mechanical clocks this was called the "escapement," and it involved gears and levers that controlled the pendulum. In modern clocks, it's generally an electrical circuit.

3. A power source -- In mechanical clocks this was a weight suspended from a cord draped over a pulley -- or a spring, i.e., the clock's mainspring. In most modern clocks, the power comes from a battery or electrical current, although some still use mainsprings that require winding.

4. A counter chain -- This is the device that counts the pulses or motion and adds it up into seconds, minutes, hours, etc., in mechanical clocks and in modern clocks it does the same thing for the pulses from an electrical current or vibrating quartz.

5. An indicator -- In the oldest mechanical clocks there was no readable "dial" or "face," so the indicator was usually a chime or bell that rang at regular intervals. The earliest clocks with faces or dials were analog clocks which display the time as moving hands that revolve around a circle with marked intervals on it. Modern clocks and watches are either analog or digital, i.e., a changing light display of numeric digits indicating the time.

How would our world be different if clocks had never been invented? No one can say. As humans, we're always conscious of sequence in the world and in our lives. We live from past to present to future -- and even if what we call "clocks" had never been invented, time would still exist and we still would have found some way to track it. Wall clocks, table clocks, wristwatches -- even that beautiful Bulova Men's Marine Star Chronograph Watch given to you by Grandpa last Christmas! -- of some sort would have been invented by someone somewhere.

But what an amazing debt we owe to clocks and timepieces. Without them, it's hard to imagine an industrialized world. A world without clocks and watches would be chaotic. Even if we're casual about dates, time frames, schedules, deadlines, and all the rest -- we still rely on marking and measuring the time to mark and measure our lives.

Like it or not we live the way we do because of clocks and watches. Whether we're using them to add beauty to our homes and gardens, or demanding the utmost in timekeeping accuracy, we run our world by our clocks and watches.

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