The Variety of Watch Movements

It’s amazing how varying technologies can ultimately result in the same outcome. There are LCD/LED, OLED and Plasma widescreen TVs, all providing relatively identical pictures to the end user, but with very different tech behind the scenes. And don’t forget about cathode-ray tubes. This concept also applies to watches, where dials can be relatively identical with hour, minute and seconds hands, complications and so on, but with very different engineering underneath. Quartz, automatics, hybrids, exotic escapements and so on provide a healthy variety of horological tech that differentiates many brands and/or segments, and we’re all better off for it.

Hand-Wound Mechanical Movements

The dawn of pocket watches brought the original hand-wound movements with the archaic verge escapement, thick construction and a degree of acceptable inaccuracy and unreliability. The fact that they worked at all was a technical marvel, but as with all new tech, things steadily improved to the perfected chronometers we take for granted today. Almost all modern hand-wound movements use mainsprings that power a balance wheel and lever escapement, and our hand-wound K-TOU tourbillon is no exception. However, our movement goes beyond the norm with a 5-day power reserve via one barrel (one mainspring), silicon escapement and silicon hairspring, and a titanium tourbillon cage.

As the name implies, hand-wound movements are wound by hand via the crown (with very few exceptions like exotic keys in the case back). It’s the simplest of mechanical engineering and usually allows for thinner designs compared to automatic counterparts, and although they’ve dominated horology for centuries, automatic movements have become the dominant players across the board. A good comparison would be stick shift vs. automatic transmissions. It wasn’t that long ago that stick shifts dominated, but they’re now hard to find and even a “feature” for performance cars if you can even find one. Fortunately, hand-wound movements aren’t as rare, but they’ve definitely become a small minority in the big picture.

Automatic Movements

Automatics all do the same thing - wind the mainspring via a weighted mass that moves as the wrists moves, maintaining a wound state at all times. This convenience eliminates the need to frequently wind a mainspring, often daily, keeping a watch running indefinitely. There are many ways to achieve this, although the most common is the centrally mounted rotor that covers approximately half of the movement.

Watchmakers toyed with the concept hundreds of years ago with the first documented automatic appearing around 1777. Abraham-Louis Perrelet created an oscillating weight that moved up and down instead of rotating, but it was effective. That same year, Abraham-Louis Breguet (what’s with all the Abraham-Louis watchmakers?) invented the remontoire (French for “to wind”) that was a small secondary power source in the form of a spring or weight. This was more to provide an even power delivery for accuracy, but could also replenish the mainspring’s power like an automatic. It proved to be too complex and expensive for production. A year later, the first automatic powered by a familiar central rotor was designed by Hubert Sarton and documented by the French Academy of Sciences, and the modern automatic was born. The technology remained rare, however, and never really gained traction until the 20th century when English watchmaker John Harwood invented a central rotor that swung 180 degrees (controlled by small bumpers) for a wristwatch. It was Rolex that perfected the automatic wristwatch with the Oyster Perpetual using a central rotor spinning a full 360 degrees. It brought a 35-hour power reserve compared to Harwood’s 12 hours and truly brought the modern automatic movement to the masses.

Our K1 automatic was designed and engineered in-house and all watches with this movement are accurate to chronometer standards (-4/+6 seconds per day). It has a silicon escapement and is even the base for Bremont’s new ENG300 movement.

Other Automatic Designs

Although the central rotor remains the gold standard for automatics, micro-rotors are a luxury alternative that allows for an unfettered view of the movement. A small, off-center rotor is tucked away in its own aperture and also allows the movement to be thinner than conventional automatics, rivaling hand-wound counterparts. Our K2 micro-rotor movement has been engineered in-house to be as efficient as conventional automatics with a 72-hour power reserve, slim 3.6mm profile (with configurations as thin as 2.9mm), silicon escapement and hairspring, and the choice of a platinum or gold-plated tungsten rotor. The Supersede GMT integrated sports watch was our first K2 piece with the Lensman 2 on the way (stay tuned for that!).

A peripheral rotor is a rare and very expensive automatic with a weighted rotor spinning around the outer perimeter of the movement. It again allows for an unfettered view of the movement and was actually designed in the 1950s by Paul Gostel with Patek Philippe designing one a decade later. It wasn’t until 2008, however, that Carl F. Bucherer produced them in meaningful numbers. Brands like Cartier, DeWitt and Audemars Piguet have models, but they’re again very expensive and rare with winding efficiencies inferior to more conventional micro-rotors and full automatics.

Quartz

In 1969, Seiko introduced the Astron, which was the first quartz watch with a price rivaling cars at the time. It forever changed the industry and threatened to decimate the mechanical art of watchmaking. The resulting Quartz Crisis of the 1970s and 1980s bankrupted many established brands, while others were pushed to the brink. The technology soon became very affordable, allowing watches to go years without fuss (no winding) and were more accurate per month than most mechanical watches were per day. They were the perfect solution to timekeeping, but simply lacked the romance and sophistication of mechanical movements, which made a comeback in the 1990s and are very popular today. Automated production allows for very attainable automatic watches now with Japanese and Chinese brands offering in-house pieces for around $100 or less, while mass production from Swiss manufacturers like ETA and Sellita allow for watches from established Swiss brands to sell for just a few hundred dollars. Seiko, Miyota and Seagull also sell movements to brands big and small, resulting in very affordable mechanical watches for the masses.

Hybrids

There are also hybrid movements that combine electric and mechanical elements with Grand Seiko’s Spring Drive being the most recognized. Released in 1999, the Spring Drive has a conventional mainspring and automatic rotor, but the escapement is an electronic Tri-synchro regulator. In layman’s terms, it’s a quartz watch powered by a mainspring, bringing the technical romance of an automatic to the accuracy of quartz (rated at +/- 1 second per day).

The Spring Drive is the opposite of early electric watches like Hamilton’s 1957 Ventura line, which had a mechanical escapement powered by an electric source (replacing the mainspring). This kept watches running as long as the battery had juice, but these early examples were notoriously unreliable.

This isn’t an exhaustive list of movement types, but covers the majority of new watches today. We’re proud to offer a conventional automatic, micro-rotor and hand-wound tourbillon in our portfolio and all meet the highest horological standards with chronometer accuracy, silicon escapements (and hairsprings in the latest micro-rotor and tourbillon movements) and sizeable power reserves. As a performance watchmaker, we only settle for the best engineering and most efficient designs as we’re always pushing the envelope of what’s possible.

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Erik Slaven