Almost everybody wears a watch but very few understand how it works. The mechanics of the wrist watch is all about watch movements. The ‘movement” or watch engine refers to the interior mechanism of the watch that drives the timekeeping functions. It may either be mechanical, automatic or quartz style. A quick look at how each system works will be a big help to understand watches.

A watch that has mechanical movement has a main spring that must be manually wound to store potential energy. This spring unwinds slowly, releasing energy to move the gears that power the watch’s timekeeping functions. An automatic movement on the other hand is mechanical movement with a self-winding design. An automatic watch harnesses the energy produced by motion to wind the spring. This movement features a rotor that spins when the watch is in motion as when the wearer moves his arm. The mechanism transfers the energy from the spinning rotor to the main spring of the winding system. The most affordable watches have quartz movement. It is called quartz movement because it is powered by a battery that works in combination with a quartz crystal.