Giving The Mechanical Watch It's Props

[crystalcranium]

Can you think of any other purely mechanical piece of technology that surpasses it? Certainly, the world of electricity and electronics took us into an entire new realm of technological achievement in the last 100 years and the intergrated circuit will continue to drive technology onward and upward, but can you think of another piece of PURELY mechanical engineering that surpasses the mechanical watch as the pinicle of technology? The internal combustion engine??? Pretty "macro engineered" stuff with tolerances many times fold higher in size than those in an early 20th century pocket watch. The fact that railroad engineers were able to carry mechanical pocket chronometers accurate to within a few seconds per week 100 years ago still blows me away. I think this is the facination with timepieces for me. I think they are the high water mark of "lever/wedge/screw" based engineering in the history of man.

[thewightstuff]

i agree,

mechanical watches hold the same fascination for me as steam engines and their ilk. theirs something i find magical about huge pistons and all the motions that mechanical watch movements give me too. i love my display back panerai for this very reason even though i hardly wear it. winding is just bliss

id include the bicycle though in with perhaps one of the amazing achievements of mechanics. simple but so efficient.

[RWG Technical]

I agree, which is one reason why I get such satisfaction from working on mechanical movements, and I am still amazed at how it all works, being so small...

Taking a movement apart, under the view of a 4X loupe, and then removing the loupe and not being able to even see the teeth on some gears or the pivots on the shafts with the naked eye, still amazes me each and every time.

I remember working with my late uncle under a 35X microscope on a Accutron movement and adjusting the small pusher arms and jewels...and this is '60's technology...wow. Not totally a mechanical movement, but certainly a mechanical miracle no less...

Even more fun, is having a movement that has a problem and won't work right, and spending hours trying to figure it out, and finally finding and correcting a defect, sometimes moving a pallet stone 0.001" of an inch, and fixing the watch...well it don't get much better than this now does it. But I guess, to each their own...when the magic goes for me, I'll put my tweezers away...

RG

[crystalcranium]

I agree, which is one reason why I get such satisfaction from working on mechanical movements, and I am still amazed at how it all works, being so small...

Taking a movement apart, under the view of a 4X loupe, and then removing the loupe and not being able to even see the teeth on some gears or the pivots on the shafts with the naked eye, still amazes me each and every time.

I remember working with my late uncle under a 35X microscope on a Accutron movement and adjusting the small pusher arms and jewels...and this is '60's technology...wow. Not totally a mechanical movement, but certainly a mechanical miracle no less...

Even more fun, is having a movement that has a problem and won't work right, and spending hours trying to figure it out, and finally finding and correcting a defect, sometimes moving a pallet stone 0.001" of an inch, and fixing the watch...well it don't get much better than this now does it. But I guess, to each their own...when the magic goes for me, I'll put my tweezers away...

RG

Yes, this is the kind of stuff that blows me away! As for the bicycle and other amazing technologies that improved our lives by leaps and bounds,... all due respect. But the watch is such an amazing machine on such a small scale with very difficult to fathom tolerances and machining....I just dont think man created anything more advanced that was purely mechanical. Yes, the liquid powered rocket enabled us to achieve remarkable things and Goddard and Von Braun overcame high technological hurdles but they were essentially harnassing explosions. The fact that a few differences measured in the thousandths of an inch add up to the difference between a chronometer and a watch that gains a minute a day is testimony to the engineering that allowed companies like Hamilton to mass produce chronometer grade time pieces 100 years ago. I know in a computer driven world, a desktop PC that made 5 mistakes out of 84,000 tasks a day would be considered junk...but in the realm of pure mechanical machines, a chronometer is still a remarkable piece of engineering.

[geekybiker]

Charles Babbages Difference engine?

[crystalcranium]

Charles Babbages Difference engine?

Nice effort but

Quote:

Babbage failed to build a complete machine. The most widely accepted reason for this failure is that Victorian mechanical engineering were not sufficiently developed to produce parts with sufficient precision.

[geekybiker]

Nice effort but

Quote:

Babbage failed to build a complete machine. The most widely accepted reason for this failure is that Victorian mechanical engineering were not sufficiently developed to produce parts with sufficient precision.

True, yet not. The photo is of a working copy at a museum. While it wasn't built by him, it is his plan. Not to mention many such mechanical computers were made http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Difference_engine

Or how about this for 65BC!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,,1960316,00.html

[crystalcranium]

True, yet not. The photo is of a working copy at a museum. While it wasn't built by him, it is his plan.

Makes me think about the guys who rebuilt and sucessfully flew Langley's Aerodrome, the one that crashed prior to the Wright Brother's flight, and claimed he actually built the first sucessful flying machine, even though there was the annoying complication that he didn't fly first!!!!!

Read somewhere that machine could do calculations to 30+ decimel places....but was operated by a crank and required thousands of revolutions for such a calculation!

[geekybiker]

The Z1 is pretty cool as well

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z1_%28computer%29

Its electrically driven (as opposed to a crank) but its programable and mechanical.

Or this one from 1928

http://scoter2.union.edu/~hemmendd/Encyc/A...al/difanal.html

[geekybiker]

Makes me think about the guys who rebuilt and sucessfully flew Langley's Aerodrome, the one that crashed prior to the Wright Brother's flight, and claimed he actually built the first sucessful flying machine, even though there was the annoying complication that he didn't fly first!!!!!

Read somewhere that machine could do calculations to 30+ decimel places....but was operated by a crank and required thousands of revolutions for such a calculation!

heh heh. Yah. But you didnt say predating watches, just an impressive piece of purely mechanical engineering. I think all the mechanical computers are the coolest things though. Mostly because they are flexibe in what they can do. There are many great single purpose mechanical marvels (bridges or what not) But few that can do different things.

[crystalcranium]

heh heh. Yah. But you didnt say predating watches, just an impressive piece of purely mechanical engineering. I think all the mechanical computers are the coolest things though. Mostly because they are flexibe in what they can do. There are many great single purpose mechanical marvels (bridges or what not) But few that can do different things.

I agree...impressive machines, but the size scale of the mechanical watch lends a "Fantastic Voyage" element to it. I'm not saying mechanical calculators are not cool....just big!

I keep thinking of Von Braun and that damn rocket though. Mechanical feedback through a gyroscope moving directional vanes against constant input. Without electronics, how the hell did the German's get V2s to within a few miles of their intended targets from launching sites hundreds of miles away using purely mechanical inputs and reactions at the speed of sound? No wonder they make great watches!

[Category 5]

For me the fascination (as much as the whole mechanical movement amazes me) is more of an affair with the concept of the balance wheel and hair spring. It's development changed the way timekeeping was approached. After all, initially timekeeping devices were fueled and regulated by the constant pull of gravity. With portable timekeeping devices the objective is completely the opposite - to counteract the force of gravity.

It amazes me to no end that a device (even those designed and built today) can keep a relative constant oscillation rate despite their varying orientation to the gravitational plane, not to mention the variable amount of charge in their power source. Seconds will remain (for the most part) constant whether a mainspring is tightly wound, or almost unwound. Like a toy car, you'd expect a watch to run much more quickly when it is wound up than when it is half wound, or nearly wound down. The real technical achievement in the mechanical watch was to negate these effects of gravity and non-constant power level while keeping a constant rate of oscillation. Pure genius. I wouldn't expect the design to be easy to come up with even with today's technology.

Edited January 24, 2007 by Category 5