Wednesday Hump Day Fun Fact # 44 !!!
Posted by Daubin Barshtak on March 05, 2014.
The self-winding or automatic watch rewinds the mainspring of a mechanical movement by the natural motions of the watch wearer. It works by an eccentric weight, called a winding rotor, rotating with the movement of the wearer’s wrist. The back-and-forth motion of the winding rotor couples to a ratchet to wind the mainspring automatically. Although the first self-winding mechanism for pocket watches was invented by Swiss horologist Abraham-Louis Perrelet (1729-1826), the first self-winding wristwatch was patented by engineer John Harwood (1893-1964) in 1923, and went into production in 1929. The watch had no crown and was set by rotating the bezel. However, the products based on Harwood’s patents proved complex to manufacture and were insufficiently robust. Nonetheless, Harwood was awarded the Gold Medal of the British Horological Institute in 1957.
Comments