Accuracy of Mechanical Watches
One thing that continuously blows my mind each and every time I think of it, is how remarkably accurate a wristwatch is!
Internally I shake my head a bit when I hear someone complain when their watch is off by 4-6 seconds per day… It’s rarely conveyed to a client the incredible accuracy of mechanical watches.
I know some of you are thinking “well I paid hundreds or thousands of dollars, I expect it to be dead on accurate”. While I understand that train of thought, if you are one of those complainers, digest this information and see if I can convince you to be a little bit less critical…
The rate of a mechanical wrist watch measured in Hz (hertz). 1Hz is equal to 2 vibrations. A vibration is one turn of the balance wheel (which is what makes the tick sound)…
This being easy enough to understand, many of today’s mechanical wristwatches function at 4Hz or 28,800 VPH (vibrations per hour) which equates to 8 ticks per second. Let’s put that into perspective…
28,800 vibrations per hour x 24 hours = 691,200 vibrations per day
The current standard tolerance for a COSC certified chronometer wristwatch is +6/-4 seconds per day.
A 6-second interval contains 48 vibrations.
This means that if a watch is off by 6 seconds, it would be off by only 48 vibrations out of a 691,200! That means out of every 14,400 vibrations, the watch is off by one tick!
Is your mind blown?
A COSC Certified Chronometer is 99.9930556% accurate at the worst!
And imagine, these incredible machines were designed and created over a century ago without the aide of computers and modern technology!!!
So when your watch is off by 10 or 15 seconds in a days time, maybe it won’t bother you so much now. Do you agree?
Jacob Grant on
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Trevor Lawrence on
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