Watch manufacturer Seiko claims its Spring Drive - an electrically adjusted automatic mechanism - varies by no more than one second per day, for example. High-end watches can vary in accuracy depending on their mechanisms. Take this concept, replace the pendulum with an object that oscillates at an extremely high frequency - multiple times per second - and you have the makings of a modern timepiece. Your clock can now track half-seconds, giving the hands a smoother motion and allowing you to adjust it with a finer degree of precision. Suppose, now, that your clock has a pendulum that swings every half-second, doubling its oscillation. That motion momentarily releases a spring in the clock's mechanism, allowing the second, minute and hour hands to progress by their respective distances around the clock face. ![]() įor example, a grandfather clock may have a pendulum designed to swing from one side to the other every second. A timepiece will use gears, cams, electric circuits or a combination thereof to translate that oscillation into the measured movement of the clock's hands or a digital readout of the time. Modern watches and clocks work using principles that first came into widespread use in the middle of the 17th century: A resonator, which is a device such as a pendulum, spring-driven flywheel or electrified quartz crystal, oscillates, which means it vibrates or swings back and forth at a consistent, measurable rate. It may have been a pre-Egyptian noble or scholar who first noticed the steady march of shadows on a sunny day, but sundials - the earliest timepieces - have been recovered from archeological sites dating back to 800 B.C. Somewhere along the line, our ancestors decided that it was useful to track measured units of time. But for those of us inclined toward more concrete discussions, timepieces offer a more manageable topic. A deep dive into the nature of time digs into such sticky wickets as multidimensionality, time travel and the nature of the universe. Existence would not stop if we chose to stop tracking time in such a precise matter - we could function just fine if our main time measurement consisted of sunrise, sunset and the position of the sun in between. The seconds, minutes and hours we use to track duration are basically agreed-upon standards that humankind has employed to represent our march from the past into the future. Time measurement, after all, is something of an arbitrary construct. But is that true? Does the Precisionist live up to the billing as a class-leading piece of technology? And how does this unique mechanism eke both smooth movement and high precision out of a quartz crystal mechanism? Take a few minutes to read on it'll be well worth your time.īefore we dive into the question of accuracy, let's take a second to get philosophical. īulova claims that the Precisionist strays from true accuracy 10 seconds or less per year, far better than the 15 seconds per month the company claims is standard for most quartz watches. But watchmaker Bulova took a different path in 2010 when it released its Precisionist mechanism: The company claims that this advanced take on quartz watch technology has raised the bar, creating the most precise watch to feature a continuous-sweep second hand. Some die-hards may stick to manual-wind watches or their automatic-watch cousins, citing the intricate beauty of their tiny mechanisms and the smooth sweep of their second hands as signs of high class, but most watch-wearers expect the relatively better accuracy and ease of use that come from a watch equipped with a quartz crystal movement.Ī number of manufacturers have tried to combine the smoothness of a mechanical watch movement with the precision of the quartz crystal mechanism: Seiko's Spring Drive mechanism marries mechanical power with electronic regulation, while Citizen's Eco-Drive adds solar power and a tiny kinetic generator to the mix. A watch is a tool first and foremost, and its ability to display reasonably accurate time is the key feature that differentiates it from a mere bangle. ![]() Of course, that's not to say that watch aficionados will tolerate lesser accuracy for the sake of a pretty piece of wrist jewelry.
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