Who invented mechanical watch

This addition, in collaboration with the balance wheel, created a harmonious oscillator that ensured oscillation at a precise period, which increased accuracy of watches greatly. Coupled with his influence, the inclusion of the lever escapement and screws into watches allowed for the accuracy to reach within one or two minutes a day and also be created in the flat shape that allows easy storing in the pockets.

Thus, to this day, the pocket watch is widely known as a small, flat, portable clock worn in the waistcoat, which is an accurate depiction of its popular use for centuries. Nevertheless, the pocket watch inevitably fell out of popularity as WWI called for the development of reliable wrist watches. Interestingly, the first wristwatch ever created was made for Countess Koscowicz of Hungary in by the swiss watch company Patek Philippe. As noticed, this is well before the beginning of WW1 in , when the wristwatch was sprung into popularity.

Although the design of a wrist watch was useful and harbored immense potential, it was primarily viewed as a feminine decorative piece for decades. Thus, wrist watches were reserved as expensive jewelry for rich women to wear as a symbol of status. However, the need for a measure of timekeeping at the hand, or the wrist, of soldiers was a crucial element in war. The first mechanical clocks which were accurate enough worked with a pendulum.

This clock needed to hang quietly, so it was not suitable for sea or pocket. Then it happened at the beginning of the 16 th century. The German Peter Henlein from Nuremberg made the first portable clock with a spring mechanism.

This is seen as the first watch. People also called these watches the Nuremberg eggs, because of the oval enclosure.

It was still an art to let the mechanical watch run accurately. The Swiss mechanics Jacob Zech and Gruet changed this with their innovation. They build a mechanism that provided great resistance when the spring was tightly wound. The gears were made of copper around This was a nice improvement, because the first parts were faulty. Copper is finer editing, making the clock more accurate. As you can imagine, this was a very expensive process involving many needlework. Therefore a watch was already a status symbol back then.

Because movement of the hands provided much more kinetic power than with pocket watches, engineers finally had the opportunity to more easily transform that power into changing mechanisms. First man who managed to do that was John Harwood, watch repairer from Bolton, England. After he claimed patents English and Swiss for automated wristwatch ion , Hardwood started producing watches in his factory in Swizerland in giving the European public chance to use watches which had the capacity for 12 hour work after they were fully charged.

Others manufacturers soon embraced designs of John Harwood and started and era of improvement. Famous watch company Rolex added a new system of weights which could move more freely and capture much more energy with every turn up to 35 hours of work when fully charged.

In Eterna Watch introduced ball bearings to the automatic watch designs, enabling much better control over internal components and ability to preserve structural integrity of the watch even when external forces reached critical levels for example when the watch was dropped on the ground.

Currently, majority of wristwatches in the world is using automatic winding, with only small percent still holding on to manually wound designs.