WATCHES
TOTAL WIND UP
Who wants to wind their own watch rather than let a battery take the strain? Not many, we bet
The manually wound movement is having a moment. Let’s get this straight – as we charge further into the world of AI, a mechanical watch that needs powering up via the crown is getting more popular. The question is, why? All mechanical timepieces once had to be wound up by hand. The automatic movement, where a rotating weight winds the mainspring, was first put into pocket watches back in the 1700s, but did not come into regular use until the proliferation of the wristwatch in the Twenties. For the first few decades of the wristwatch, the majority kept on with the manually wound movement. But automatic was the cutting edge and steadily became more widespread. By the time automatic chronographs were introduced at the end of the Sixties, auto winder had become the watch engine of choice.