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Watch Words - a Glossary of watch related terminology

Annual Calendar

The automatic allowances for the different lengths of each month of a year in the calendar module of a watch. This type of watch also usually shows the month and date, and sometimes the day of the week and the phase of the moon.

Antimagnetic

Mechanical movements can be influenced by the magnetic fields often found in common everyday places. This problem is generally by using anti- or nonmagnetic components in the movement as in the eta 2824-2 which we use for the Malvern Automatic.

Antireflection

A film created by steaming the crystal to eliminate light reflection and improve legibility. This film can scratch quite easily so at CWL we choose only to use this treatment on the inside of the crystal glass although Dubey & Schaldenbrand are unusual in that they prefer to coat both sides of all their wristwatches.

Automatic winding

A rotating weight, set into motion by moving the wrist, winds the spring barrel via the gear train of a mechanical watch movement. Automatic winding was invented during the pocket watch era in 1770 by Abraham-Louis Perrelet, who created a watch with a weight swinging back and forth (that of a pocket watch usually makes vertical movements contrary to a wristwatch). The first automatic –winding wristwatches, invented by John Harwood in the 1920’s, utilised so-called hammer winding, whereby a weight swung in an arc between two banking pins. The breakthrough automatic winding movement via rotor began with the ball bearing Eterna-Matic in the late 1940’s, and the technology hasn’t changed fundamentally since.

The Eterna-Matic is the grandfather of our own automatic movements. Eterna became ETA and is now owned by The Swatch Group.

Automatic Watch

An Automatic Watch is a watch whose mainspring is wound by the movements or accelerations of the wearer's arm. On the basis of the principle of terrestrial attraction, a rotor turns in an Automatic Watch and transmits its energy to the spring by means of an appropriate mechanism. The system was invented in Switzerland by Abraham-Louis Perrelet in the 18^th century.

Bar or cock

A metal plate fastened to the base plate at one point, leaving room for a gear wheel or pinion. The balance is usually attached to a bar called the balance cock.

Blued screw

Swiss watch making tradition dictates that a movement should contain blued screws for aesthetic reasons. Polished steel screws are heated (or tempered, as it relaxes the steel) to 290 degrees C. This process relaxes the steel, turning it a deep blue in colour.

All Christopher Ward movements use the chemically induced version that ensures an even colour every time.

Calibre

This term refers to each different type of watch movement e.g. ETA 2824-2

Chronograph

From the Greek words for time, chronos, and to write, graphein.

Originally a chronograph literally inscribed the time elapsed on a piece of paper, with the help of a pencil attaché to a type of hand. We use the term today to describe watches that show not only the time of day, but also certain time intervals via independent hands that may be started or stopped at will as in the C4 Peregrine shown here.

Crown

The crown is used to wind and set a watch. A few simple turns of the crown will get an automatic movement started (as with The Malvern Automatic and Aviator models), while a manual watch is completely wound by the crown.

The crown is also used for the setting of various functions, almost always including at least the hours, minutes, seconds and date. A screwed down crown like the one on the Malvern Aviator (pictured here) can be tightened to prevent water entering water entering the case or any mishaps while performing extreme sports like diving.

Escapement

The combination of the balance, balance spring, pallets and escape wheel, a subgroup which divides the impulses coming from the spring barrel into small, accurately proportioned doses. It guarantees that the gear train runs smoothly and efficiently.

GMT

GMT, or Greenwich Mean Time, is based on the globe being divided into 24 time zones as established in the London Meridian Conference of 1884. The zero meridian runs through the Royal Observatory in the London suburb of Greenwich. In contemporary watch terminology, GMT is often used to describe a wristwatch that displays a second time zone or a 24hour indication.

Guilloche

A surface decoration usually applied to the dial and the rotor using a grooving tool with a sharp tip, such as a rose engine , to cut an even pattern onto a level surface.

Jewel

To minimise friction , the hardened steel tips of a movement’s rotating gear wheels (called pinions) are lodged in synthetic rubies (fashioned as polished stones with a hole) and lubricated with a very thin layer of special oil. These synthetic rubies are produced in exactly the same way as sapphire crystal using the same material.

Luminous substance

The radioactive substance, tritium, used to be widely used to coat hands, numerals, and hour markers on watch dials to make reading the time in the dark possible. Watches bearing tritium must be marked as such, with the letter T on the dial near 6 o’clock. It has now for the most part been replaced by non radioactive materials such as Super-Luminova (as with Christopher Ward watches) and Traser technology due to medical misgivings and expected governmental regulation of its use.

Mainspring

The mainspring, located in the spring barrel, stores energy when tensioned and passes it on to the escapement via the gear train as the tension releases.

Today, mainsprings are usually made of Nivaflex, an alloy invented by Swiss engineer Max Straumann in the early 1950’s. This alloy basically comprises iron, nickel, chrome, cobalt and beryllium.

Manufacture

Most experts agree that the term, which is from Latin and means “made by hand”, should be used for a company that manufactures at least one calibre, or extremely important parts of it such as the base plate, on the premises. While ten years ago this constituted only a handful of companies in Switzerland and Germany today’s competitive market has forced a number of others to invest in developing their own movements. ETA is without doubt the largest manufacture (horologists prefer using French) and, at present, Christopher Ward uses them exclusively for all our automatic movements.

Plate

A metal platform having several tiers for the gear train. The base plate of a movement usually incorporates the dial and carries the bearings for the primary pinions of the “first floor” of a gear train.

Quartz

Timekeeping’s technical revolution found its way to the world’s wrists in the late 1960’s. This was principally a Swiss invention (the first working quartz watches were made by Girard-Perregaux and Piaget in a Swiss joint venture) but it was the Japenese firms, primarily Seiko, who were the first to see the advantages of the new technology and came to dominate the market.

The quartz movement uses the famously stable vibration frequency of a quartz crystal subjected to the electronic tension (usually 32,868Hz) as its norm. The Malvern Chronograph has the renowned Ronda Calibre 5040D, shown below ,as its quartz movement.

Rotor

The rotor is the component that keeps an automatic watch wound. The kinetic motion of this part, which contains a heavy metal weight around its outer edge, winds the mainspring. The rotor seen here is from the specially commissioned ETA 2824-2 movement for the limited edition C5 Malvern Aviator.

Sapphire crystal

Synthetic sapphire crystal is a virtually scratchproof material with a hardness of 10 on the Mohs scale which means only a diamond is harder. The material is known to gemmologists as aluminium oxide or corundum, can be colourless (corundum), red (ruby), blue (sapphire) or green (emerald). It is “grown” using a method invented by Auguste Victore Louis Verneuil in 1902 whereby a process that usually takes a thousand years to complete is accelerated to just a few hours, hence the use of the term synthetic. Unsurprisingly, sapphire crystal has become the material of use to protect the dials of all high end modern wristwatches including all Christopher Ward timepieces.

Split-seconds chronograph

Also known in the watch industry by its French name, the rattrapante. A watch with two second hands, one of which can be blocked with a special dial train lever to indicate an intermediate time while the other continues to run. When released, the split-seconds hand jumps ahead to the position of the other second hand. Both the C3 Malvern and C4 Peregrine have this useful function.

Spring barrel

The spring contains the mainspring. It turns freely on an arbour, pulled along by the toothed wheel generally doubling as its lid. This wheel interacts with the first pinion of the movement’s gear train. Some movements contain two or more spring barrels for added power reserve.

Tachymeter

A scale on the dial, flange, or bezel (as in the case of our C4 Peregrine) of a chronograph that, in conjunction with the second hand , gives the speed of a moving object. A tachymeter takes a value determined in less than a minute and converts it into miles or kilometres per hour. For example, the wearer could measure the time it takes a car to pass between two mile markers on a road. When the car passes the second marker, the second hand will be pointing to the car’s speed in miles per hour on the tachometric scale.

Tourbillon

A technically demanding device invented by Abraham Louis Breguet in 1801 to compensate for the interference of gravity on the balance of a pocket watch, thus improving its rate. In a tourbillon (from the French word for whirlwind), the entire escapement is mounted on an epicyclic train in a “cage” and rotated completely on its axis over regular periods of time, usually once a minute. This superb horological highlight, whilst being completely unnecessary for a wristwatch, is seen as a sign of technological know-how in the modern era. One day we may decide to commission our own CW tourbillon and have had early conversations with a bespoke manufacture of haute horologie. Watch this space.

Vibration frequency (vph)

The ring-shaped balance swings around its own axis and acts as the ruling organ of the movement’s escapement. It’s amplitude (normally about 300 degrees) is restricted by the very thin balance spring, which also provides for the reversing of its direction od rotation. The frequency of the alternating vibrations is measured in Hertz (Hz) or in the more usual vibrations per hour (vph).

Most of today’s wristwatches tick at 28,800vph (4Hz, like our own Malvern Automatic ) or 21,600vph (3Hz).

Water resistance

Usually measured in increments of one atmosphere (atm or bar, equal to 10 metres of water pressure) or metres and is often noted on the dial or case back.

Swimming or snorkelling require 5 atm whilst scuba diving needs 20 atm to be sure.

The record is held by The Hydromax by Bell & Ross which was developed for professional deep sea diving and is resistant to 11,100 metres!

If you've not found what you are looking for, perhaps try the definition of 'Watch' on 'Wikipedia'.

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