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Vintage Pocket Watch History

Saturday, June 18, 2011

Author: Roger Smith

The vintage pocket watch was a long time being introduced. Mechanisms for keeping time were developed hundreds of years ago, however it was in the 1500's before the first mobile time keeping device came to be.

The early clock's mechanisms were quite large and too heavy to be considered for a portable clock. The majority of clocks , because of their size were only used in cathedrals and other large buildings, where space was not a factor.. Large stone or metal blocks were used as weights and counterbalances to provide power for these clocks.
The mobile clock would have been a far fetched idea during this period of time. The invention of the portable watch brought a large number of advances to modern civilization. It would over time become useful to astronomers, mariners and others with the need to calculate time and location.
One of the first inventors of record to make a watch was Peter Henlien, a german locksmith. Steel was the primary metal used to create the first watches. Locksmiths and blacksmiths became the first watch buildeers as they had the skills to work with metal.in the making of tools. Soon the locksmith took over the trade when gold, silver and brass came to replace steel. The locksmith was more adept in working with these materials and the small parts of the portable clock.
Up to this time a watch was about 5 inches wide and near 3 inches thick, still a bit large to carry around. The discovery by the makers of clocks of spring technology brought about the first mobile time piece. Spiral springs would be wound and uncoiled to advance the hour hand of the watch. While the technology was an improvement, it was not truly accurate as springs do not uncoil at an even rate of speed.
Although inaccurate these timepieces were leaps and bounds ahead of telling time by the movement of the sun. A solution was found for accuracy when watch builders observed that springs uncoiled constantly when not wound to tight. The stackfreed was a cam with an additional spring that compensated for the main springs changes in speed and included a fusee which kept the spring being wound to tight.
Around 1675 the watch makers found that a spiral connected to the balance provided a notable increase in accuracy. These improvements produced a watch that was accurate to within minutes. The watch now had a minute hand. The second hand was nearly a century away. Soon after calenders and other gadgets were added and the vintage pocket watch as we know it came to be.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/antiques-articles/vintage-pocket-watch-history-4835240.html


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More about the vintage pocket watch at < a href=http://vintagepocketwatch.net>Vintage Pocket Watch

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