Summary
A watch is a portable timepiece intended to be carried or worn by a person. It is designed to keep a consistent movement despite the motions caused by the person's activities. A wristwatch is designed to be worn around the wrist, attached by a watch strap or other type of bracelet, including metal bands, leather straps, or any other kind of bracelet. A pocket watch is designed for a person to carry in a pocket, often attached to a chain. Watches were developed in the 17th century from spring-powered clocks, which appeared as early as the 14th century. During most of its history the watch was a mechanical device, driven by clockwork, powered by winding a mainspring, and keeping time with an oscillating balance wheel. These are called mechanical watches. In the 1960s the electronic quartz watch was invented, which was powered by a battery and kept time with a vibrating quartz crystal. By the 1980s the quartz watch had taken over most of the market from the mechanical watch. Historically, this is called the quartz revolution (also known as quartz crisis in Switzerland). Developments in the 2010s include smart watches, which are elaborate computer-like electronic devices designed to be worn on a wrist. They generally incorporate timekeeping functions, but these are only a small subset of the smartwatch's facilities. In general, modern watches often display the day, date, month, and year. For mechanical watches, various extra features called "complications", such as moon-phase displays and the different types of tourbillon, are sometimes included. Most electronic quartz watches, on the other hand, include time-related features such as timers, chronographs and alarm functions. Furthermore, some modern watches (like smart watches) even incorporate calculators, GPS and Bluetooth technology or have heart-rate monitoring capabilities, and some of them use radio clock technology to regularly correct the time. Most watches that are used mainly for timekeeping have quartz movements.
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.
Related publications (3)

Tribological Approach to the Watch Movements

Valentine Agnès Madeleine Magnin

Mechanical watches are complex and sensitive systems that have to maintain a faultless precision over their lifetime. However, this precision can be altered by disturbances occurring during the functi
EPFL2020

Appearance of polished 18 karat gold surfaces: linking aesthetics to surface features

Leili Batooli

Impeccable appearance of surfaces is a key constraint in high-end jewelry and watch manufacturing. Based on long tradition in the industry, appearance of products is assessed by trained individuals th
EPFL2019

Watch-dictaphone for Automatic Medical Codification

Frédéric David Meylan, Pierre-André Farine, Sara Grassi Pauletti, Patrick Stadelmann

This paper describes the development of a voice data recording watch and the accompanying software and hardware needed to build an integrated solution for medical data capture and automatic codificati
EURASIP2008
Related concepts (70)
Quartz clock
Quartz clocks and quartz watches are timepieces that use an electronic oscillator regulated by a quartz crystal to keep time. This crystal oscillator creates a signal with very precise frequency, so that quartz clocks and watches are at least an order of magnitude more accurate than mechanical clocks. Generally, some form of digital logic counts the cycles of this signal and provides a numerical time display, usually in units of hours, minutes, and seconds.
Watch
A watch is a portable timepiece intended to be carried or worn by a person. It is designed to keep a consistent movement despite the motions caused by the person's activities. A wristwatch is designed to be worn around the wrist, attached by a watch strap or other type of bracelet, including metal bands, leather straps, or any other kind of bracelet. A pocket watch is designed for a person to carry in a pocket, often attached to a chain. Watches were developed in the 17th century from spring-powered clocks, which appeared as early as the 14th century.
Clock
A clock or chronometer is a device used to measure and indicate time. The clock is one of the oldest human inventions, meeting the need to measure intervals of time shorter than the natural units such as the day, the lunar month, and the year. Devices operating on several physical processes have been used over the millennia. Some predecessors to the modern clock may be considered "clocks" that are based on movement in nature: A sundial shows the time by displaying the position of a shadow on a flat surface.
Show more
Related courses (19)
MGT-411: Innovation management
This is a collection of lectures on "structured innovation systems," codified approaches to stimulating and managing the process of innovation. Some of the systems to be covered may be Design Thinking
HUM-409: Thinking the nature I
Le cours examine de manière ouverte les constructions de la Nature par diverses sciences et cultures. Il met l'accent sur la pluralité des modes d'apparition de la Nature et sur les rôles qui lui sont
EE-594: Smart sensors for IoT
This lecture provides insights in the design and technologies of Internet-of-Things sensor nodes, with focus on low power technologies. The lectures alternate every two weeks between sensing technolog
Show more
Related lectures (164)
Innovation: Novel vs. Innovative
Discusses innovation, learning from failure, creating value, challenges in hardware and software development, and the role of early adopters.
Innovation: Novel vs. Innovative
Explores the distinction between novel and innovative concepts, emphasizing the importance of understanding human behavior in the innovation process.
Crowdsourcing & Crowdfunding
Delves into crowdsourcing and crowdfunding, showcasing examples like the Netflix Prize and the Facebook Translation Project.
Show more
Related MOOCs (3)
Introduction to Object-Oriented Programming in C++
Le cours suivi propose une introduction aux concepts de base de la programmation orientée objet tels que : encapsulation et abstraction, classes/objets, attributs/méthodes, héritage, polymorphisme, ..
Projet de programmation en java
The purpose of this MOOC is to offer a complementary capstone project to our existing MOOCs in introduction to programming. This will offer the students the possibility to both stabilize the already a
Introduction to Object-Oriented Programming in Java
Le cours suivi propose une introduction aux concepts de base de la programmation orientée objet tels que : encapsulation et abstraction, classes/objets, attributs/méthodes, héritage, polymorphisme, ..