Your watch tells you the time, but how exactly does it work? How does it tell us the time? This is one of the big questions that can be asked if one is interested in watchmaking. You will find in this part of our guide, everything you need to know about the operation of a watch, whether mechanical or electronic.

Indeed, one of the fundamental differences to understand how your timepiece works will be to know the type of movement that is in it. Is it a Quartz (electronic) or a mechanical movement?

Let’s start now to discover the heart of a watch to better understand how it works.

Some basic notions

A watch is a time measuring instrument that allows you to tell the time at a minimum. To do this, two major technologies exist today, one with a mechanical movement and the other with a movement operating through an electric current and Quartz. Some movements can also be hybrid, using the benefits of quartz to help the mechanical movement to be more precise.

However, whatever the technology used, it is always necessary to have:

• a source of energy
• a motor that will transmit energy via gear wheels (in most cases)
• a maintenance device that can maintain and count the transmitted oscillations
• a regulator that will stabilize the transmitted power over time to allow the watch to be accurate over time
• a display to read the time that can be analog with hands or digital
  Most watches (quartz or mechanical) will then offer the hours and minutes functions, to which we can add complications, the most common are: the seconds, the date, the moon phase, the chronograph, etc.

Mechanical or electronic?

The world of watchmaking has been separated for the past 50 to 60 years by a deep fracture between quartz watches and mechanical watches. But what are the big differences and why prefer one or the other?

How a mechanical watch works

It is the oldest type of caliber, one that has been used for several centuries. Its principle resumes exactly what we have described above. It will use a particular source of mechanical energy, that is to say a coil spring on itself (the barrel) which relaxes little by little to drive the movement. To learn more, visit this page.

How a quartz watch works

There are two big differences in a quartz watch compared to a mechanical model. They are in the power source and in the regulator. The energy source here is a battery or a battery. The regulator is no longer mechanical, but it is a quartz oscillator whose operation is electronic. To learn more, visit this page.

Other parts of a watch

In addition to movement, watches are composed of other elements that are:

• The box
• The dial
• The needles
• The bracelet