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1. Korloff En Cas D'Amour watch with automatic winding in both directions. It has a silvered dial, curved sapphire glass and black alligator leather strap, and is available in stainless steel, white or rose gold.
2. Glashutte Senator Perpetual Calendar with automatic winding. It features a matt grey galvanised dial, panorama date, moon phase, leap year indication and crocodile leather strap with signet deployment clasp.
3. Hampton City automatic watch from Baume & Mercier in a white gold case with 488 diamonds. It has a mother-of-pearl dial, diamond-set flanks and sapphire case back along with a white alligator leather strap.
4. Jean Richard TV Screen Milady Joaillerie watch with green mother- of-pearl dial, featuring a sapphire crystal case back and galuchat strap. It is water resistant to 30m and available in steel, pink or yellow gold. |
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STORY KANNAN CHANDRAN
It's all in the wrist.
STRAP on a self-winding watch and know that you don't really have to worry about it, as long as you're up and about, and especially if you're actively using your watch arm.
Also known as an automatic watch, this common, yet fascinating, movement is essentially a mechanical watch whose mainspring is wound by the wearer's arm movement. An automatic watch tends to be thicker than classical hand-wound pieces due to the presence of the oscillating weight - a metal plate pivoting around a central shaft. A rotor in the watch rotates back and forth in a circular motion when the wearer's hand moves. It drives the barrel ratchet-wheel by a gear-train which winds the mainspring that powers the watch. It takes between 110 and 160 turns of the oscillating weight to wind the spring by a complete turn.
This self-winding movement to generate power has become popular among watch manufacturers and watch collectors. Besides being called automatic and self-winding, you might also hear of the perpetual watch, which is essentially the same thing.
The name Perpetual, used by Rolex, was first coined by Abraham-Louis Breguet who was working on Abraham-Louis Perrelet's original concept, developed in 1770. Perrelet, one of Switzerland's greatest watch-makers, is considered the father of the automatic watch, though like many geniuses, he was ahead of his time. Perrelet had developed this movement but it was better suited for a wristwatch. Only problem was, the wristwatch hadn't been invented yet!
Before Perrelet invented the automatic movement, watches were wound with little keys, which invariably went missing. According to a report to the Geneva Society of Arts in 1776, "Master Perrelet, watchmaker, has made a watch in such a way that it winds itself in the wearer's pocket as he walks; 15 minutes' walk suffices to make the watch run 8 days. Owing to a slopwork, continuation of the walking motion cannot damage the watch."
The pedometer watch, introduced in 1770, had an oscillating weight that jumped up and down as you walked, supplying energy to the mainspring in the process. Perrelet also released a movement with a silently spinning rotor. Breguet improved on this movement, calling them "perpetuelles".
When watches wound up on wrists, the automatic had a brief but lasting moment in the spotlight. The Great Depression, however, was to put an end to further development.
Miniaturisation, though, helped the automatic watch. The mini-rotor, sunk into the movement plate, made the watch thinner.
While quartz may be convenient, automatic watches will always hold the fascination of those who appreciate accurate timekeeping as much as the skilled handwork involved in crafting a mechanical timepiece. This age-old technology involves many moving parts that help to keep very accurate time, and the fact that there are no batteries to change makes it environment-friendly.
Most automatic watches may require some manual winding after a long period of inactivity, but usually anything from 10 to 40 turns of the crown should do the job. Unlike a manually wound mechanical watch, an automatic doesn't have a hook that resists further winding when it's reached its maximum.
Once fully wound, most automatic movements will keep ticking for up to 48 hours. There are some that can go twice that amount of time.
While there are very few manufacturers that actually make automatic movements, most would rely on something from the vast catalogue of the ETA group. This Swiss company is part of the Swatch Group, and has thousands of employees in Europe and Asia who manufacture about 100 million units annually.
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