Girard-Perregaux Constant Escapement. Waiting for the blade to snap
A flexible silicon blade meters energy inside the escapement. The interesting moment comes when its loaded shape can no longer hold and the blade snaps across.
Read the story03 / Movement
A closer look at what the dial keeps hidden.
The mechanics under the dial, one piece at a time: escapement, chronograph, GMT, hairspring.
12 stories
The tourbillon paradox: why we love a mechanism the wrist no longer needs in quite the same way
Breguet wanted a pocket watch to keep a more consistent rate. Two centuries later, his rotating carriage is one of the most coveted sights in wristwatches. What does it actually improve?
Read the story
George Daniels and the escapement the industry was slow to want
The Co-Axial did not add another function to the watch. It changed how energy reaches the balance. Getting George Daniels' invention into production proved much harder than fitting it to a working wristwatch.
Read the story
Why does a stopwatch need two seconds hands?
One hand stops while the other keeps going. A split-seconds chronograph lets us read two results from the same start. We explore how it works and what makes the Lange Double Split different.
Read the story
The mechanical watch that looks like quartz
One step every second. What passes unnoticed on an everyday quartz watch takes extra machinery inside a mechanical movement. Jumping seconds is the craft of making a hand wait.
Read the story
The watch that tells the time in the dark
A minute repeater builds a complete time from two notes. We follow how the movement reads the hands and turns a wristwatch into a tiny musical instrument.
Read the story
The half-circle that winds a watch while you walk
An automatic rotor does not generate energy. It collects motion from the wrist. Here is how that motion reaches the mainspring, and what happens when the watch is full.
Read the story
G-Shock: why a thick rubber case is not enough
A G-Shock is not simply a quartz watch wrapped in thick plastic. Its case shape, hollow interior and cushioned module work together to redirect an impact.
Read the story
The world timer: how the whole planet fits on one dial
There was a time when every town kept its own hour. Then the trains arrived and order had to be imposed. And a Geneva watchmaker worked out how a single dial could show all twenty-four zones.
Read the story
The escapement: that sound is what makes a watch a watch
The real trick of a mechanical watch is not that it runs, but that it runs slowly. The whole job is done by a cluster of parts the size of a fingernail, saying yes and no eight times a second.
Read the story
Neither quartz nor mechanical: the Grand Seiko Spring Drive
There is a watch with no battery, yet a quartz crystal inside. It has no escapement, yet a mainspring drives it, and its seconds hand glides perfectly. This is Spring Drive, and it took one engineer 28 years.
Read the story
The column wheel: how a chronograph decides to start
From the outside a chronograph is simple: press it, it runs; press it, it stops. Inside, though, something has to sequence all of that precisely. The finest solution is a tiny, turret-like wheel.
Read the storyNo stories match just yet.
Try another phrase, or explore every section.