If you are thinking of buying a new wristwatch, and are trying to decide which one is right for you, one of the most fundamental questions is: should you buy a quartz watch, or should you by an automatic watch
Perhaps we should start with another question: What is the difference between a quartz watch and an automatic watch
The most common type of watch nowadays is the quartz watch. The quartz watch is quite simply an electronic watch. Why is it called quartz This is an interesting question. Quartz technology was a remarkable invention. Basically, a watch needs some way to keep track of the passage of time accurately in order to function. It was discovered that when you pass an electrical current through a quartz crystal, it oscillates at a constant frequency. Simply put, the oscillation of the crystal is used to measure time.
Quartz watches are extremely accurate. A good quality quartz watch will be accurate to within seconds every month. In addition, because they don t have a lot of moving parts, they are very durable, withstanding drops, jolts and abuse better than an automatic watch. And the real kicker is that they are less expensive than automatic (mechanical) watches.
One objection some have to quartz watches is the need to replace the battery periodically. Some manufacturers have introduced solar powered watches. The best of these is Citizen s Eco-Drive technology. Eco-Drive watches have dials that are translucent, although they look like ordinary watch dials. Any light, even indoor light, passes through the dial into a solar receptor. Power is stored in a rechargeable titanium lithium-ion battery, so that the watch doesn t require constant exposure to light. Fully charged, Citizen watches. powered by Eco-Drive will run for several months without exposure to light.
So if quartz watches are more robust, more accurate and cheaper than automatic watches, why would anyone buy automatic watches Gerd-R Lang, a German watchmaker who heads Chronoswiss, coined a slogan for his company that encapsulates our attraction to automatic watches: "Faszination der Mechanik", roughly translated as a fascination with things mechanical, particularly micro-mechanics.
Automatic watches are mechanical watches, powered by a spring which when wound up, transfers power, through a regulating mechanism, to a series of gears which eventually turn the hands which display the time on the dial of the watch. It is an absolutely fascinating piece of machinery, often incorporating several hundred tiny parts.
The term automatic is sometimes erroneously used to describe all mechanical watches, but it is only the most common type of mechanical watch. It is called automatic, because it is self-winding. A small rotor on the back of the watch spins around, with any movement you produce while wearing, or gently shaking the watch, and while doing so, winds the mainspring. Other mechanical watches, called manual-wind, or hand-wind, need to be wound manually.
Good quality mechanical watches, while relatively fragile, should last more than a lifetime is properly maintained. It is rare to see a quartz watch not get thrown out after a few years, but there are a lot of mechanical watches around that are 50 or even 100 or more years old.
While quartz watches are just one more piece of electronics, in danger of being replaced by newer technologies such as cell phones, the mechanical watch is a link to our past. While mechanical watches are now produced by high-tech machinery, their basic technology is several hundred years old. And if the watch survives, it will be because of our fascination with this ancient technology.
Watches: Automatic Or Quartz?
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