[HN Gopher] Mechanical Watch ___________________________________________________________________ Mechanical Watch Author : todsacerdoti Score : 3400 points Date : 2022-05-04 15:06 UTC (1 days ago) (HTM) web link (ciechanow.ski) (TXT) w3m dump (ciechanow.ski) | ThePhysicist wrote: | I was curious how he did those visualizations so I looked at the | source code. Turns out he codes everything _by hand_ in WebGL | [1]. Absolutely impressive stuff. Source code is non-minified so | you can have a look and understand everything as well. | | [1]: https://ciechanow.ski/js/watch.js | kragen wrote: | Why is "codes everything by hand" surprising? Is WebGL a really | shitty API or something? | donatj wrote: | > Is WebGL a really shitty API or something? | | Yes. Almost no one uses it directly. | kragen wrote: | Why not? What's wrong with it? | donatj wrote: | Here is "drawing a triangle" | | https://www.tutorialspoint.com/webgl/webgl_drawing_a_tria | ngl... | lostgame wrote: | Holy living crap. I was all with it up until I saw the | actual full HTML example. That is an incredulous amount | of overhead for what is essentially one of the most basic | and fundamental operations in *GL. | | Comparing this to Canvas is almost like comparing | assembly to C. I'm honestly very surprised. | kragen wrote: | Though boilerplate is never acceptable, most of that is | constant-factor overhead, not per-triangle overhead, and | tutorialspoint is not a site you should trust under any | circumstances. See my links above for better sources. | | If you put more vertices and indices in Step 2 you can | draw an arbitrarily complex 3-D object with this same | code. | | And there's a lot of stuff in GLSL where you can program | directly with high-level concepts like vectors, normals, | and partial derivatives, instead of expressing them by | hand the way you would in C. | woojoo666 wrote: | Using a framework is also constant factor overhead (at | least in LoC, which is what I assume we're talking about | here) | kragen wrote: | Right, and that's what the glslCanvas project I linked | above is, though in this case it's _negative_ overhead if | you 're just counting the lines of code you have to | maintain :) | woojoo666 wrote: | Ah gotcha. Yeah I was alluding to ThreeJS, a very | powerful and standard framework for webgl | kragen wrote: | Yeah, ThreeJS is awesome! glslCanvas is just for drawing | with shaders, not for general 3-D. | donatj wrote: | Yup. This is why my crappy little 3D game engine still | uses canvas and not WebGL. I can't feel good about myself | and deal with all that. | kragen wrote: | Yeah, Canvas 2D is great, though it's not any more OO | than WebGL, and I sometimes forget to create a new path | and wonder why it keeps getting slower and slower with | every frame. SVG is also pretty reasonable. | andai wrote: | Neat, you do the math yourself and then render the | tris/quads in canvas? I did something like that recently | (in C/SDL, later RayLib). I found it amusing that to get | performant 2D rendering you have to use a 3D API, so my | "software rendered" 3D engine which just uses the gfx api | for 2D draw calls ends up using 3D for the 2D under the | hood... | | There's at least one (great) game written like that | though, Need for Madness with a custom 3D engine and just | using java's 2D gfx api for rendering. | kragen wrote: | I did this in 02007 in JS: | http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/torus | | Except that WebGL didn't exist so I just had to use the | 2-D <canvas>. There's probably some trick for getting | antialiased polygon edges in <canvas> to not show | cracks... | kragen wrote: | That looks like a fair bit of boilerplate, and a shitty | tutorial with comments that mostly just repeat what the | code says, but the API doesn't look unusable. | | https://github.com/patriciogonzalezvivo/glslCanvas/blob/m | ast... has most of that same boilerplate in a less | repulsive form. https://github.com/patriciogonzalezvivo/g | lslCanvas/blob/mast... has other bits. | andai wrote: | Now compare it with Flash ;) | dncornholio wrote: | ActionScript was fucking great. :( | donatj wrote: | Honestly I think your examples are both genuinely _less | comprehendible_ to someone without a deep understanding | of GL going in than my example. | | It's a very bad, non-object oriented API in an object | oriented language. It was designed for and by people who | know GL in other C like languages, not for people who | know JavaScript. It is unlike any other part of the | language. | | The fact that I have to write a shader myself, as a | fricken string like I'm writing SQL over here, just to | draw a triangle is absurd. There should at the very least | be some sort of provided builder for simple shaders. | kragen wrote: | Yeah, they probably are, I didn't intend them as | tutorials but as a better representation of the actual | scutwork necessary to draw a triangle. | | Object-oriented languages are not a good way to do 3-D | rendering. If you want to write pixel shaders in JS you | can totally do that but you will have to run them on the | CPU; as it happens I wrote a program last week that works | that way: http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/dev3/trama. If | you want to run them on the GPU you need a language that | exposes the GPU's capabilities. | | In essence your primary complaint is that the GPU | instruction set is not object-oriented (and neither is | your database). Well, you can design your own GPU, but | I've got some bad news for you about Verilog, Chisel, and | BlueSpec! And you may find out that the real problem is | that solid-state physics isn't object-oriented, so your | OO GPU will end up underperforming, like the Burroughs | B5000 and the Symbolics 3600 (hopefully not as badly as | the Intel iAPX432). You'll probably have more success | writing an object-oriented database. | | However, I do agree that WebGL is a bad API, because | boilerplate is never acceptable. | yiyus wrote: | > you may find out that the real problem is that solid- | state physics isn't object-oriented | | I am saving this quote for future use. Thank you :) | cycomanic wrote: | Funny, I would argue that the rock on my table is very | definitely an object ;) | indigochill wrote: | But even if we're arguing physics, that's debatable. The | shape and toughness of the rock are actually an effect of | forces between the atoms composing the rock, and the | weight of the rock is actually the interaction between | the mass of the rock and the earth. The color of the rock | is the effect of the interaction between the molecules in | the rock and photons (which are themselves wave-like) and | then the interaction between that light and the cells in | your eyes. | | Objects are a convenient day-to-day model in real life | and software, but there are more "functional" models that | comprise the object model. | kragen wrote: | Examine it more closely; you will find that it is a | dynamical system composed of sextillions of parts, | constantly entering and leaving the rock, and that the | boundaries between the rock, the table, and the air are | very fuzzy indeed. It isn't even encapsulated, nor are | its interactions with its environment mediated by | messages to which it freely chooses a response; it _is_ | its environment. | TedDoesntTalk wrote: | Your insight is remarkably well-written. I wish we could | see our bodies in the same way, all of the time. The | world might be a kinder place overall. Do you meditate? | kragen wrote: | Not enough to be useful. But I'm glad you enjoyed it! | kaba0 wrote: | I don't see how someone not understanding GL first can do | anything useful with it. Like, what would such people | even use it for? If they need a complete solution just | use a plugin that displays some rotatable 3D model. But I | really don't see the value of planning for the lowest | common denominator in case of a highly specialized domain | specific API. | sha-3 wrote: | Yep, that's why the visualizations do not run on my hardened | Firefox. I disabled WebGL. | [deleted] | bananabiscuit wrote: | You should considering enabling it for this site. I don't see | what the downside here would be. | sha-3 wrote: | And it was worth it. | notjustanymike wrote: | Fun fact, the time and date on the model is correct as well. | hennybobbu1994 wrote: | grishka wrote: | Are you sure about the _by hand_ part? There 's a lot of | repetition, it feels like at least some of it must be | generated. | grishka wrote: | I asked him. I was wrong. | | https://twitter.com/BCiechanowski/status/1522067904522428417 | matheusmoreira wrote: | I wish he'd write a post about how he developed these | visualizations. How does one even learn how to make something | this amazing? | indigochill wrote: | > How does one even learn how to make something this | amazing? | | I haven't done anything quite this amazing, but I have | created other things with minimal upfront knowledge and | "the way" is simple: just jump in and give it your best | shot with what you already know, identify the most glaring | deficiency in what you made, take your best shot at solving | that, and repeat that process until you have something | cool. You can also use this process to focus what you spend | time studying/learning, as you backfill the information you | were missing to figure out how to overcome whatever | obstacles you encounter. | | It does take time, but you know what they say about long | journeys and single steps. Sometimes there are no shortcuts | and you just have to take a lot of steps. | emmelaich wrote: | Yeah, I'm sure a lot of it is copy/pasted or #included from | his other work. | ThePhysicist wrote: | There is repetition but it doesn't look auto-generated to me. | soheil wrote: | Can you point to what libraries he could have used that would | have made it simpler? I doubt anything like would benefit from | any type of abstraction that currently exists, unless it was a | more interactive application that would incorporate user input | etc. | JayStavis wrote: | Depending on one's skillset, you could use a dcc tool like | Blender + three.js to make _creation_ of these visuals and | interactions much simpler. Have a look at gltfjsx + react- | three-fiber [1] combination, which themselves are | abstractions over vanilla three.js. | | With that said, the raw webGL approach here is arguably more | educational, so goal achieved I think! | | [1] https://docs.pmnd.rs/react-three-fiber/getting- | started/examp... | | Edit: there's actually a 50 LOC watch example with r3f: | https://codesandbox.io/s/bouncy-watch-qyz5r | soheil wrote: | Cool example, but all r3f is doing here is just providing | the threejs camera, controls and the text with emoji, the | watch itself is loaded as a .glb file, where I'd assume | most people would be interested in learning about. | JayStavis wrote: | Yeah, I think exporting a scene from blender as glft/glb, | and then using these tools to bring your exported 3D file | to the web, is one of the more approachable abstractions. | | The reason you'd use gltfjsx (which that example doesn't) | is to have fine grained controls for every node in the | scene graph. In the case of the watch, this would map to | having a component for each mesh or gear, which can be | controlled with mechanics/physics. | ThePhysicist wrote: | Three.js maybe, but it doesn't abstract too much away in my | opinion, it has a lot of functionality around more complex | topics (textures for example), but since he doesn't seem to | use those it's probably not worth the hassle. | abhayhegde wrote: | Apart from going to each post and manually looking at the JS | codes, is it possible to get them all in one go? | https://ciechanow.ski/js/ returns 403 error. | syncsynchalt wrote: | wget will do what you want, with the right flags. Try `wget | -r https://ciechanow.ski/mechanical-watch/ --include- | directories=js/`, the resulting `ciechanow.ski/js/` dir | should have it. | | Adjust the flags as necessary to crawl more of the site if | needed (omitting `--include-directories` without an `-l | {limit}` flag will eventually crawl the whole site, please be | kinder to their bandwidth than that). | panzerboiler wrote: | He does it "the right way(tm)". Use the platform. Don't use any | framework or generic library. Go straight to the point and code | what you need, when you need it. Don't minify or bundle | anything, and let the people who are learning and courious a | straightforward way to connect the dots, without forcing them | into a github repository with 90% of the code unrelated to the | thing and existing just to glue 1000 pieces written by 10000 | people together. Every essay by Bartosz is so top-notch and a | such breath of fresh air! He gives me hope in humanity and I am | immensely grateful for what he does. | 10000truths wrote: | I mostly agree with you, but I don't mind minification when | appropriate, as it can serve a functional purpose with | tangible end-user-friendly benefits (less downloaded over the | network = faster response times). | | But if you want to be friendly to the tinkerers, you could | always host both the *.js and *.min.js versions, and have the | webpage just pull the latter - anyone who wants the | unminified source can remove the "min" part from the URI, | while the majority of end users will still benefit from | pulling the minified js. | throwaway2214 wrote: | minified js is not greatly smaller than gzipped js, I think | the whole minification thing is a swing and a miss and now | we have to deal with source maps and shit, and build | pipelines and etc $ ls -la -rw-r | --r-- 1 jack 197609 330905 May 4 22:56 watch.js | -rw-r--r-- 1 jack 197609 152172 May 4 22:55 watch.min.js | $ gzip watch.js $ gzip watch.min.js $ ls | -la -rw-r--r-- 1 jack 197609 43690 May 4 22:56 | watch.js.gz -rw-r--r-- 1 jack 197609 32507 May 4 | 22:55 watch.min.js.gz | jseban wrote: | > and now we have to deal with source maps and shit | | Yeah minification is only really for obfuscation. The | small and unpredictable difference is absolutely not | worth the ridiculous complex "solution" of source maps. | Just the fact that your debugger really doesn't work | right, is a deal breaker in and itself, not to mention | all the time spent configuring and fighting with webpack. | | I don't think any form of "compilation" i.e. bundling, | transpiling, minification etc is needed at all. | Javascript can already dynamically load (additional) code | files when needed, I don't understand why you need to | bundle it in the first place. | | I don't buy that the http request overheads are so big | that it motivates all this complexity, and in the average | case a user don't use every single page of the | application anyway, so by bundling everything you are | always serving "too much", compared to just dynamically | loading additional code. | MrDOS wrote: | Of surprise to no one, Brotli does better on both: | $ ls -l *.js -rw-r--r-- 1 mrd staff 330904 5 | May 01:04 watch.js -rw-r--r-- 1 mrd staff | 152172 5 May 01:10 watch.min.js $ brotli | watch.js $ brotli watch.min.js $ ls -l | *.br -rw-r--r-- 1 mrd staff 34461 5 May 01:04 | watch.js.br -rw-r--r-- 1 mrd staff 27122 5 | May 01:10 watch.min.js.br | | If I were serving this content, and if my web server and | all of my target browsers supported Brotli, I'd be | somewhat more content to ship an un-minified + Brotli- | compressed file than an un-minified + gzip'd one. I'm | sure it's some rule of thumb stuck in my head from the | Web 2.0 era, but a JavaScript payload in excess of 40KB | crosses some warning line in my head. (Probably 40KB / | ~4KB/s throughput on a good dial-up connection = 10s | transfer time, about the longest you'd want to wait for | even a pretty spiffy page to load.) | MrDOS wrote: | > I'd be somewhat more content to ship an un-minified + | Brotli-compressed file than an un-minified + gzip'd one. | | Whoops, typo: I meant to say that I'd be somewhat more | content to ship an un-minified + Brotli-compressed file | than a _minified_ + gzip 'd one. That is, I'd be more | happy to serve the 34.4KB watch.js.br than the 32.5KB | watch.min.js.gz. | lifthrasiir wrote: | Gzipped JS is generally much smaller than minified JS, | but minified-then-gzipped JS is even more so. The | minification (assuming gzip) doesn't make a much | difference in this case only because the input file is | not that large at all and compression algorithms have a | natural bias for larger inputs. You can (rightly) claim | it is bad to have a JS file large enough that the | minification makes a difference after all, but you'd be | moving a goalpost then. | selcuka wrote: | True, but it also removes the comments and the | whitespace, leading to slightly better performance and | memory usage. There are also less bytes to gzip on the | server side. | Cthulhu_ wrote: | Slightly, but is it enough to warrant the extra steps? | | I don't think the difference is significant enough in | this case. | | That said, I do think there should be an alternative to | minification+gzipping, like e.g. a compiled version of JS | that is more optimized than a browser's own JIT compiler | can do. Mind you, that might up being a larger package | than the JS source code. | kaba0 wrote: | Webassembly is* pretty much that | | * hopefully will be | kevincox wrote: | A discoverable version would be to include source maps that | link to the original as well. That way a browser console | will automatically pull up the original. | klabb3 wrote: | People measure minification in byte size (unfortunately I | guess you're charged by CDNs by that metric too?). In | reality everything text based compresses really well over | the wire. In either case, importing tons of libs left and | right is going to vastly out-size any minification, yet | most fe devs are very liberal with dependencies. | | Minification strips comments too though, which may be | undesirable in many cases. | operator-name wrote: | That's simply not a very well followed (and thus | discoverable) standard. Especially for hand crafted code, | minifying functions and variable names only obfuscates what | is written and minifying whitespace often only has minimal | benifits. | | In practice this seems to be a lost cause, and links to | alternatively hosted source code is more common. Sadly this | makes is simple to introduce subtle, harmful differences | between the source and what is hosted. | NoSorryCannot wrote: | The pattern is extremely common on CDNs that serve JS. | monocasa wrote: | It's hard to guess that extra assets exist on the server if | they aren't being pulled down by the site itself. | | Seems better just to have premassaged source available in a | repo somewhere, or called out on the page itself for a | downloaded archive. | phailhaus wrote: | The tradeoff is that there is basically nobody else that has | the expertise or time to do the same thing at a similar level | of polish. We're not going to see more Ciechanowski-level | posts unless new libraries and frameworks make it more | accessible. | Handytinge wrote: | We definitely won't if people are taught that frameworks | are the only option and never allowed to just write a full | program on their own. | phailhaus wrote: | Nobody stopping you from _not_ using a framework, and yet | there is basically nobody else at Ciechanowski 's level. | It's not going to happen, you can't expect everyone to | become a hardcore webgl expert (have you tried?). If we | want more cool interactive visualizations, we have to | make it easier. Otherwise, we're stuck waiting for those | with the time and expertise to pull it off. | javajosh wrote: | Maybe, maybe not. We should do the experiment, though. | phailhaus wrote: | What experiment do you mean? | Liron wrote: | We need a ciechanow.ski explainer for how ciechanow.sky | explainers are built | jhallenworld wrote: | Where are the comments in his code? :-) | AceJohnny2 wrote: | > _He does it "the right way(tm)". Use the platform. Don't | use any framework or generic library._ | | Hard disagree. "Use What's Right For You(tm)". | | Of course there is value in understanding the platform | beneath your framework or generic library, but that's just an | extension of "understand what you're using and why". | valtism wrote: | I strongly disagree that this is "the right way". I think | that the platform provides low level primitives that are | _designed_ to have abstractions built upon them. | | Doing it like this has the potential to be the most | performant, but it does so in the same way as writing your | programs directly in assembly is potentially performant. | | I also don't think that the source code is particularly | readable for me, and contains lots of magic numbers and very | imperative code. I would personally find it a lot more | readable if it was written in some sort of declarative way | using a library, even if I have to look at a GitHub repo | instead of view source. | jseban wrote: | > has the potential to be the most performant | | It also has the potential to evolve in the most efficient | way. | the_cat_kittles wrote: | it depends if you are doing something to get paid, or to | last, or to be really good. only in the first case do i | ever consider a heap of abstractions | noitpmeder wrote: | This is so backwards. | the_cat_kittles wrote: | it really depends on what your doing mate! | kaba0 wrote: | Abstraction is the only thing that makes any of our | advancements possible. Not even the simplest of math | theses could be proves without a "framework" of relevant | lemmas, nor could you write even a single hello world | without the layers upon layers of abstractions written | carefully over the decades. Sure, there is also bad | abstraction, but the problem is the bad part, not the | concept itself. | | Without abstractions you wouldn't be able to read a text | stored on a remote computer with accompanying style | information displayed the same on both of our devices and | with embedded 3D graphics doing the same thing on vastly | differing devices be it a top of the line GPU or a simple | low-end phone. Is it not abstraction? | the_cat_kittles wrote: | i mostly mean the _heap_ of stuff people often throw at | problems. of course you cant do anything without | abstractions. it helps to understand them better though. | jseban wrote: | Well, if the abstractions were peer reviewed and put | through the same rigour as mathematical proofs, that's a | whole different topic. | | The equivalent would be a mathematical services company, | who created "free" abstraction packages that required you | to rewrite all your math, away from the scientific | community standards, to fit their abstractions, and who | also made money on consulting and selling books. And the | big benefit of it all, is really that they only | abstracted away writing summaries of your papers, which | is actually the easiest part that is quite irrelevant to | your research. | kaba0 wrote: | But it is not math - we only have empirical evidence and | not even much from that. | | Who is to tell whether the OSI model is ideal? It is more | than likely not it, but we can't measure these things up | front, there is an insane cost associated with changing | it, etc. Yet again, what is the alternative? We can't | manage complexity any other way, and essential complexity | can't be reduced. | the_only_law wrote: | > Who is to tell whether the OSI model is ideal? | | The current idea of the OSI model was also retrofitted | from what it originally was. | ranit wrote: | > but it does so in the same way as writing your programs | directly in assembly | | > contains lots of magic numbers and very imperative code | | Well, we really don't know if the code was written in this | form by hand, don't we. | | It could have been compiled into this, to use your words, | "assembly with magic numbers and imperative" from much more | elegant form. We may see this form only because this is | what browsers understand. | | I am not saying it _was compiled_ , just speculating that | seeing pure WebGL does not mean it was pure WebGL to begin | with. | tomc1985 wrote: | Graphics code tends to be imperative and have lots of | magic numbers. I suppose it's the math-intensive nature | of it. | | Personally I'm not a fan of the magic numbers either but | as I study more and more of it, it's _everywhere_ | aiisjustanif wrote: | It was. | | https://twitter.com/BCiechanowski/status/1522067904522428 | 417 | swayvil wrote: | On a scale of 1 to 10 how strongly are we talking here? | plebianRube wrote: | 9.5 Your PR will be held up for at least a month with the | back and forth. | Cthulhu_ wrote: | > Don't minify or bundle anything | | Yeah in this case it doesn't need to; there's no extraneous | or unused code or documentation blocks, and gzip (and | comparable) compression is good enough, minification doesn't | actually reduce the downloaded code size by that much. | WHA8m wrote: | He made this in the spirit of watch making. Super impressive | and interesting website! | tomcam wrote: | Holy shit | rsp1984 wrote: | I'm observing that developers these days are quite surprised to | see anyone write code for OpenGL / WebGL directly instead of | using some layer of abstraction on top, such as Three.js or | Unity etc. Few seem to know that OpenGL already is an | abstraction of the computing model underneath. | | A couple years ago I did some consulting for a company that | needed a point cloud rendering engine. Luckily I had one ready | to go. I showed them and they liked it and their young devs | asked which library I was using. When I told them I used OpenGL | they couldn't believe it. To them OpenGL was the "black magic | box" and using it akin to having secret conversations with the | GPU in some arcane cryptic language. | bori5 wrote: | In my waking up state I read that as "some layer of | distraction". How fitting ;) But back to original post , yes | his work and website is amazing. | jachee wrote: | When it's time to simplify and/or troubleshoot overly- | complex things, I like to use the phrase "The abstraction | is a distraction". | hilbert42 wrote: | _" Turns out he codes everything by hand in WebGL "_ | | You really have to admire people who do stuff like that (I | can't imagine that I would ever have the patience to do that). | | What I'm mildly curious about is why would anyone want to do | it? Is there a demand for such stuff? I can understand it if | the exercise was for training people but wouldn't most people | who were interested in the internal workings of watches already | be familiar with them? | | I'd reckon most would be like me in that they'd pulled enough | watches apart in their younger years to already know their ins | and outs (I've long lost track of the number watches and clocks | I've either fixed or disassembled by the time I was a | teenager). | bitcurious wrote: | > I can understand it if the exercise was for training people | but wouldn't most people who were interested in the internal | workings of watches already be familiar with them? | | Most young people don't even have access to a mechanical | watch these days. | syncsynchalt wrote: | There's little benefit to writing your own asm these days[1], | yet we need people who know asm intimately to write | compilers. | | It's the same here. Without people who deeply understand a | tool's input and output, we won't ever write a better tool. | | [1] don't @ me, cryptographers and kernel programmers. | Cthulhu_ wrote: | I like that; it's a lot of work but a lot of people seem to | prefer to have to make libraries work together than to just do | the work, and it's timeless since it doesn't depend on any | future frameworks; any issues that might come up in the future | with regards to browser incompatibility can be fixed relatively | easily. | | Would antifragile be an applicable word to use here? | ojr wrote: | I have a WebGL project thats been broken for a few years due | to a browser deprecated api, it is not a relatively easy fix | mettamage wrote: | I hope Nicky Case puts this in his list of explorables :) | freeCandy wrote: | There's also a subreddit for aggregating interactive | explanations like these: https://old.reddit.com/r/explorables | mattmoose21 wrote: | Interesting to see why seiko calls their automatic line 21 | jewels. | tadzik_ wrote: | They don't call it that. "21 jewels" just describes the amount | of rubies in the watch movement. | joshwcomeau wrote: | This fits into a category of thing known as "explorable | explanations". They're an amazing form of media. This one is | particularly brilliant! | | Check out this site for many others: https://explorabl.es/ | 99_00 wrote: | How difficult is it to bootstrap the ability to manufacture | mechanical watch parts? | | It was only in 2017 that China joined the elite club of countries | capable of making ballpoint pens. Is it that hard? | | https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/01/18... | alfalfasprout wrote: | Very hard. And it comes at an outrageous price. Independent | watchmakers usually go one of four routes: | | 1) Source a movement from a big manufacturer (eg; ETA/Valjoux | or a japanese/chinese movement) and use it as is but design the | case/dial yourself 2) (1) but modify the movement adding | functionality, replacing parts, or refinishing it to your own | standard 3) Designing a custom movement around specialty | movement parts from a supplier like Jaeger LeCoultre. They make | some of the trickier parts (gears, balance springs). They can | also manufacture special parts on a swiss screw machine. 4) | Going through a bespoke movement maker like agenhor. You tell | them what you want and they have both the machinery to make | many custom parts and source the rest from elsewhere. They also | provide movement design expertise. | | Actually machining the watch parts isn't the hard part... the | tricky part comes in things like hairsprings and escapements | which are made from sometimes exotic materials like silicon. | Some tiny watch parts are made using electrical discharge | machining which costs $$$$$$$$ as well. | criddell wrote: | That depends on how many parts you want to make and to what | tolerances. | | https://www.gearpatrol.com/watches/a636135/greubel-forsey-ha... | WHA8m wrote: | Looks like a fun website to spend a hour or two. Thanks! | | Regarding tolerances, your OPs article states that they were | actually able to produce them before, but not at a satisfying | quality. I don't know what a 'good enough' quality is, | though. It's a good story nevertheless :) | michael1999 wrote: | What great work. The only thing I had to read twice was how | energy is restored to the oscillation. The text doesn't discuss | the role of the slope on the jewel fork teeth. But everything | else was so clear as to be transparent. What a loving gift. | boesboes wrote: | Wow very comprehensive & well done. | | If mechanical watches tickle your fancy, there is a ton of watch | repair video on YT. I particularly enjoy wristwatch revival | (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCD80T1s2Za4K682CQDGwEKQ). | | A warning though, if you consider to get into that hobby. I | tried, it's really hard, expensive (I spend close to EUR1k and | that is with b-quality stuff. Good stuff is 5-10x more | expensive.) and can be rather frustrating. Finding parts to buy | can be complicated depending on your locale, loosing parts is | very easy and destroying parts, even when gentle and careful is | par for the course. | | I hat to put my repair hobby on halt after running out of | practice pieces. All now have broken or missing parts. your | milage may vary ofcourse :) | gganley wrote: | Love Marshall's stuff! I also suggest their Magic: The | Gathering podcast [Limited Resources](https://lrcast.com) for | those int TCGs. | antiframe wrote: | I shared this blog post with him and he said "That's the | coolest thing I've ever seen". I can't say I disagree with | him. | donthellbanme wrote: | To those interested in becomming a Watchmaker I can offer this: | | 1. The school route is great, but after the two year program | you still won't get a parts account from anyone. You will have | no problem finding a job though. | | 2. Self-taught. It will take awhile, but it's a rewarding | hobby/career. | | Every budding Watchmaker should have books. Books by DeCarle, | Fried, and Daniels are great. | | There are old correspondence courses that are good to. Try to | get Chicago School of Watch Repair, and Bulova School of Watch | Repair. Hunt around for the best price. | | The quality of internet videos on the internet are spectacular. | You are lucky to have them. When I started their was only one | guy who taught Watch Repair. | | Tools: | | #2, #5 Dumont tweezers. (any tweezers will do, even the cheap | ones.) | | Watch back removal tools. You will need various types, | including Rolex, and universal tools. | | small ultrasonic bath to clean parts. A mason jar filled with | cleaning fluid, and rinse will suffice to hobbiests though. | | oils. Moebius are recommended, but expensive. Personally I | think they are overpriced. | | Presto #1,#2 hand removers. | | some Radico. | | A mainspring tool. These can get pricy. Look for a old set of | Marshall mainspring removal tools. | | Decide if you want to work with a loupe, or a 10-40x | stereoscope. | | a band remover. | | A staking set. (Look around. No need to spend more than $250.00 | | A jewelers lathe, mill, etc. come way later. The biggest | mistake newbies make is buying every tool they thing they might | need. Then again you wealthy boys can go crazy. | | Too tired to go on, but I'm in the Bay Area under "I buy | Watchmaker, jeweler, amd some Machinist's estates. I'm gearing | up to do repairs. I hope to have a website soon. I'm thinking | about teaching, but not sure if there's a market for it. | 93po wrote: | I was able to get into this with a $60 set of screwdrivers, a | $20 crappy movement from eBay, and another $20 toolkit of | random watch repair stuff that wasn't really necessary. And | maybe like $20 of lube. I would never attempt to service | something I wear/use, but for the $20 crap movement off eBay | there's no harm no foul. | boesboes wrote: | I probably already went overboard a bit when staring out. My | cost where mostly in a stereo microscope and the consumables | (mobius oils, cleaning liquids). Oh and maybe I didn't need a | timegrapher before having a functional movement haha | | Also, almost everything I had to import in to the EU. | Importing chemicals is expensive for some reason I | discovered. UPS charged me like 3 times the usual amount. | | There is a lot of advice that says 'don't cheap out, just buy | good stuff'; which is great if you are going to make this | really your hobby for years to come. But I feel starting with | some cheap tools on a junk movement is a fine start. | glogla wrote: | My favorite video series of this sort is this guy building | Antikythera Mechanism from scratch, including making his own | era-appropriate tools. | | https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZioPDnFPNsHnyxfygxA0... | tgmatt wrote: | When I saw this, the first thing I did was Ctrl + F to see if | anyone else dropped Marshall's link. I have no desire to do it | myself, but it's so satisfying to watch him repair them. His | videos are great. | dan_quixote wrote: | His videos are a delightfully interesting AND relaxing. | Always a joy to watch and very little patreon/shill filler. | kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote: | Huh, I recently got into it and, as is my way, I did things on | the cheap. All told, including tools and practice movements | (and a couple inexpensive whole watches I restored) I'm in for | maybe $100. | | Here's a tip on buying watches to repair or restore - avoid the | big brands at first. Many watches use the same or similar | movements (ETA is a big one, but you'll find Seiko movements | hiding in watches from the 60s and 70s, too). | | eBay is your friend (don't fall for too-good-to-be-true items | from India or Pakistan) | | Hang out on watchrepairtalk.com and/or watchcrunch.com and ask | lots of questions. It's a very friendly community. | technothrasher wrote: | > A warning though, if you consider to get into that hobby. I | tried, it's really hard, expensive | | Wrist watches are pretty hard and expensive. Pocket watches are | less so. When I was interested in getting more intimate with | watch repair, I went to eBay and bought up a whole bunch of old | pocket watch movements. I've got about 150 of them in various | condition, most of them Waltham (easy to get, inexpensive, and | I happen to have spent the first 25 years of my life spending a | lot of time in the old Waltham Watch Co factory building | because my father's company leased out space in it). | | Basic tools aren't too bad, just a nice set of tweezers, | screwdrivers, and a good magnifier is enough to do a lot of | repairs. But you can fall down the rabbit hole pretty quickly | with the desire for increased quality tools and things like a | staking set so you can replace balance wheel arbors. | | I tried to move from the pocket watches into wrist watches, and | while the technology is largely the same, the reduced size and | increased complexity made it less enjoyable for me. Instead I | ended up moving the other direction and now have a nice | collection of 18th and 19th century 30-hour and 8-day clocks | (more commonly known as "grandfather clocks"). | jachee wrote: | I was recently gifted an 1850's Waltham that a buddy | restored. Pulling it out of my pocket is now my standard | answer to "What's your TikTok?" | | This little site really helped me cement in my mind what's | going on inside of the watch. | germinalphrase wrote: | If you wouldn't mind answering a question, how difficult is it | to swap a dial/handset/movement set into a different case? | | I saw a custom mod watch that paired the face/movement of a | Marathon navigator with an O&W diver case*. Is a combination I | find desirable (as the Marathon bezel is too chunky for my | use), but the maker won't respond to emails. | | Is it possible that the combination could be " drop in" or is | it likely to require significant modification? | | *https://westcoastime.com/m16typidivbe.html | boesboes wrote: | That really depends on the sizes, if the face and movement | are the same size I expect it should be easy enough. You will | need some tools and fine motor skill, but no where near as | much as you need when taking apart a movement. | | Looking at the two watches you mention, the navigator has a | Quartz Harley Ronda 373 movement and the diver has a ETA | 2824-2 movement. The 373 I can't find the specs for, but from | an ebay auction it seems to be a 111/2''' diameter. The | 2824-2 is the same diameter. However, all 111/2''' ronda | quartz movements I can find are 3mm thick where the 2824 is | 4.6mm. So what I'd expect is that it will fit, but you might | not be able to secure it properly. It really depends on how | the movement is held in place. Perhaps you can | fabricate/3d-print a spacer for that. | | Another consideration is the lug stem, that might not be the | right size. To long is solveable, to short means buying a | replacement. I am also not sure wether the stems can have a | different thickness, to thin and it wont be waterproof, to | thick just won't fit. | | You could probably try without destroying anything (no | guarantees ;)), you are not really touching any of the | fragile & tiny parts. But you will atleast need tool(s) to | open the cases, they might be different, and a tiny | screwdriver to release the lug. And I wouldn't count on it | remaining waterproof, not sure. | germinalphrase wrote: | Thank you for the detailed response! It's the sort of | project I find intriguing, so I'll have to do a little more | digging. May end up being beyond me though. | | Edit: I see that Marathon does make several watches with | the 2824 (which would presumably simplify the process). | coredog64 wrote: | Depends. The ETA-2824 is a fairly common movement with | inexpensive Chinese clones, so dials and hands are reasonably | cheap and common. If the target case also uses the same ETA | movement then it's simple: Unscrew the back, remove the crown | stem, drop the movement. Assembly is the reverse of removal. | | Where it gets tricky is if the target doesn't use the same | movement. In that case, I'd just buy an AliExpress watch with | the same dial size and an ETA clone movement. Otherwise you | have to ensure your target is the correct size and you'll | probably need to 3D print a movement holder. | germinalphrase wrote: | Thanks for the response! | 1970-01-01 wrote: | Interesting content, interactive, ad-free, and social-media free. | The entire site is a great example of how the old Web was better | than it is today. | modeless wrote: | Your definition of "old web" includes WebGL? | | Stuff like this is a smaller percentage of the web these days, | but in absolute terms there's more of it than ever before and a | lot of it is higher quality too. | Teknoman117 wrote: | As much as I might like features of smartwatches, my favorite | watch is a skeleton style mechanical watch my grandparents bought | for me a number of years ago. Watching the teeny tiny gears | moving around is somewhat cathartic. | archon810 wrote: | https://ciechanow.ski/archives/ - the blog archive is full of | such marvels. | rabuse wrote: | That's it, this is gonna make me pull the trigger on a | skeletonized watch. I've been wanting one for a couple years, but | never really sat down and browsed, but I appreciate the mechanics | so much more after reading this. | vngzs wrote: | It's like a clear hood on your car. On a nice enough car, it | shows the beauty of the engine. But on a cheap one ... Skeleton | watches can be uniquely telling of the price of the watch. | | Worth mentioning, most mechanical watches will have a sapphire | back, so when you take them off you can admire the movement | privately. | Andrew_nenakhov wrote: | This is breathtaking, couldn't stop reading until finished. It'll | be my go-to example of the best possible educational material. | Linda703 wrote: | richardlblair wrote: | Did not read, but I did play with all the slidey things. They | were fun. | tamiral wrote: | This is such an easy to follow understanding on mechanical | movements. WOW! From someone who tinkers with watches all the | time and has to explain a simple mechanism over and over I've | found my resource to send to friends now. | leeoniya wrote: | i'm continuously astounded by how accurate the Omega Aqua Terra | is. it will be within 90s over a 30 day period after 4 years of | daily use with no servicing. the fact that something mechanical | and so tiny operating at 3.5hz can do this is mind blowing to me. | | it has a cool [8800] co-axial escapement: | https://www.kapoorwatch.com/blogs/through-the-scope-the-omeg... | andrewgleave wrote: | Interestingly, I met George Daniels a number of times (creator | of the co-axial escapement). He asked me to record a video on | my phone of a model he created to illustrate how the escapement | works: | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVhSQ_Azkr8 | | Not the best video you'll find on it now, but he was a | fascinating man. | vmurthy wrote: | Ha! I followed a rabbit hole and found this gem : Listen to how | 3Hz sounds like. It's hypnotic https://www.omegawatches.com/en- | au/watch-omega-speedmaster-m... | | (Search for 3 Hz and click the Audio icon) | leeoniya wrote: | i put on some decent headphones to listen to this and can | tell you that at least on my 8800 movement (and the common | ETA 2824-2 in another watch i have), this clip misses some | important nuance. | | both movements have an audible "twang" of the hairspring at | each tick -- you can hear it in this video: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNYCujza8JU. the sound is | somewhat different for each watch, since the 8800 has a Si14 | hairspring and the cheaper 2824-2 is metal. if you want | another rabbit hole: [1] | | what's interesting is that if you leave the watches on a hard | flat surface, like a table or nightstand, the entire surface | amplifies this twang, so you can hear it from several feet | away. | | [1] https://watch-insider.com/reportages/omega-defeats- | mechanica... | CydeWeys wrote: | If you want absurd accuracy in a watch powered by mechanical | energy (without just resorting to a battery-powered quartz), | look into Grand Seiko's spring drive. It's super interesting | technology, and the result is a smoothly sweeping second hand | (as in it's actually continuous, not merely a higher number of | beats per second). | leeoniya wrote: | yep, i've considered that one; insane engineering for sure. | but the watch's aesthetics don't do it for me. also, it does | feel a bit like cheating ;), if an EMP were to go off, i dont | think the Spring Drive would come out okay like a purely | mechanical watch would. | | another crazy one is Zenith's all-silicon oscillator: | | https://masterhorologer.com/2017/09/14/zenith-defy-lab- | the-w... | | https://monochrome-watches.com/zenith-defy-lab- | revolutionary... | CydeWeys wrote: | To be clear, there are literally hundreds of different | models of Grand Seiko watches that are powered by spring | drive that have been produced over the past two decades | plus, with wildly varying looks across the range. It's not | just _one_ watch I 'm talking about here. | leeoniya wrote: | i probably would not get a watch model from two decades | ago, let's limit it to maybe past 5yrs. | | most (all?) that i've seen have a power reserve gauge. if | it's a daily wearer, that needle will be pegged to max | and basically useless clutter. complications for their | own sake are not my cup of tea. | | most (all?) that have a date function have the extra-wide | single digits, which i'm not a fan of. | | (i could go on) | | i know it's not one model, but there's certainly similar | design language to them (as there should be, perhaps), | likely due to the geometry of the movement itself. i | havent seen anything wildly varying, as you say. | CydeWeys wrote: | Here's one example of one without a date or a power | reserve gauge: https://www.grand-seiko.com/us- | en/collections/sbgy007g | | If you do want a date, but it's specifically the font on | the date wheels they use that you don't like, then you're | probably SoL. | BadassFractal wrote: | Incredible work with this article. I didn't realize experiences | like that were even possible in the browser without a whole | company backing the effort. | rotten wrote: | This bumps up my desire to build my own mechanical watch using | one of the kits here: https://rotatewatches.com (something I've | had bookmarked for a while as a possible rainy day project) | mjard wrote: | One of my isolation projects was to put together a watch using | an ETA 2824-2 movement from EBay. You might want to consider | buying the parts you want individually. Match a case to a | movement or it's clone. Find a dial that matches the movement | complications and the case diameter. Find hands that match the | movement and the case diameter. Most of the work is in the | identification of parts, putting the watch together is really | just like slapping a small sandwich together (minus putting the | second hand on, that... is a test of dexterity, perseverance | and commitment, the shaft you have to set it on is ~0.25mm). | | Often a seller will be a small time watch maker and their | components will all fit together, a good way to save on | shipping. | | Result: it's become my favorite watch, I wear it every day. | | Next project was to use a bunch of cheap clone parts and a 3d | printed dial, still working on that one :) | exhilaration wrote: | I'd love to see a picture of your watch! | ChrisMarshallNY wrote: | That's very cool. | | One of my favorite memories, as a kid, was visiting a museum in | Toronto (I think it was the Science Museum). | | Many of the exhibits had buttons that you could press, to make | them go. | | I remember a giant steam piston. That was cool. | chairmanwow1 wrote: | cached version of the page: | https://web.archive.org/web/20220504151534/https://ciechanow... | subsubzero wrote: | As someone who has been into mechanical watches since I was kid, | this article is beyond amazing and explains everything about how | a watch is powered with excellent interactive diagrams and cool | animations. The author should try to go after other areas of | mechanical movement like operation of a car or a plane. So well | done! | modeless wrote: | He didn't do planes yet but he did the internal combustion | engine: https://ciechanow.ski/internal-combustion-engine/ and | boats: https://ciechanow.ski/naval-architecture/ | | I could post more but just go to the archives and see. Every | single one is a treasure and there are few enough that you can | read them all: https://ciechanow.ski/archives/ | FR10 wrote: | As usual Bartosz with another extremely high quality post, I have | one question, in this bit: | | > However, when the driving gear can't rotate because it's | blocked by the rest of the gear train, the cannon pinion can | overpower the friction of that tight fit and rotate on its own. | This lets us set time without interfering with the gear train, | which could break the delicate parts. | | How can the cannon pinion (green) both overpower the friction to | slide freely and also be attached to the driving gear (blue) when | functioning regularly? | | Does this imply that the driving gear and cannon pinion wear each | other out every time you adjust the time? | mayapugai wrote: | This is a wonderful article! Thank you to the author for taking | the time to write and animate all this. | | I want future generations to have access this so I have to ask - | how can I back up this page with all of the interactive 3D | animations still operational? Simply saving the HTML file doesn't | seem to work. | wardedVibe wrote: | Bug report: the balance wheel animation when run on Firefox on my | android eventually becomes a forced oscillator, with the slider | running off to infinity | tempestn wrote: | > Once the pallet fork unlocks the balance wheel, that wheel has | to start spinning very quickly. This is why gears in the gear | train have holes in them - it reduces their moment of inertia so | that the barrel can accelerate them more quickly. | | I think that should say "unlocks the _escape_ wheel ", not the | balance wheel. | soheil wrote: | Crazy to see this thing with the spring is constantly rotating so | furiously all the time all so just that the second hand would | move ever so slowly once a second. | sakopov wrote: | A few months back I stumbled upon a YouTube video of a watch | maker servicing a mechanical watch. This started a mild obsession | with watch making and I've been watching these videos ever since. | For anyone interested, here's an awesome video [1] of a guy | putting together a watch and explaining how all 60 parts of a | typical mechanical watch work together (by the way the tools he | uses are as cool as the movements themselves). It's surprisingly | easy to follow for a noobie. | | [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkK6e4tb5Qk | sebmellen wrote: | Just imagine the utopia that would emerge if all education were | conducted through web-essays like this. Bravo! | tomaskafka wrote: | I believe that for every Bartosz Ciechanowski (huge kudos and | thanks to him!) there are 100 similarly abled people, who can't | create essays like this, because they need to do something else | to keep the lights on. A collective loss. | elxr wrote: | Sounds like something basic income could help alleviate. | anuvrat1 wrote: | Words aren't enough to describe Bartosz's work, every one of them | is a masterpiece. | | Twitter: https://twitter.com/BCiechanowski Patreon: | https://www.patreon.com/ciechanowski | s3ctor8 wrote: | I didn't know I sas going to learn about watch mechanisms today, | but I couldn't stop reading! | moffkalast wrote: | It's so insane how they figured out all of this. The self | winding one way gears are even like a mechanical full bridge | rectifier. | | How was any of this even manufactured at such miniscule | scales... | wumms wrote: | Bug report: on page load, the play/pause button for the stop | lever interaction [0] shows the play icon albeit the animation is | already playing. | | (The div needs the class 'playing' added, e.g. | <div id="stop_lever_interaction" [...]> [...] | <div class="play_pause_button playing"></div> </div> | | instead of <div class="play_pause_button"></div> | | ) | | [0] https://ciechanow.ski/mechanical- | watch/#stop_lever_interacti... | mananaysiempre wrote: | OK, if we're piling up here :) | | > This mechanism protects the fragile tips of the balance shaft | from braking when the watch experiences a sudden jerk. | | "Breaking", presumably. | | More generally, am I the only one who finds that the temporal | aliasing in the fast repetitive animations just before the | balance is introduced looks funny to the point of being | misleading? Might be my combination of mobile hardware, though, | I wouldn't normally expect it to synchronize to the framerate | to this extent, but I'm seeing that it does. | | (I appreciate the immense effort it would take to make this | account for aliasing with motion blur or similar. I just went | "huh?" when fiddling with the speed slider there, because it | really was confusing at first.) | _fat_santa wrote: | There's something magical about mechanical watches. Maybe it's | just knowing that you have this perpetually winding machine on | your hand (in the case of "automatic" mechanical watches). | | Also knowing that the thing will last forever, take care of it | and it will probably outlive you. Can't say that about an Apple | Watch. | | If you want a good mechanical watch that won't break the bank I | suggest picking up a Seiko SKX (though prices have been going | up), a Vostok Amphibia (might be hard with the ukraine conflict) | or a Timex Marlin. | rusticpenn wrote: | Not to defend Apple watch or other smart watches, but they have | been my dream since my childhood watching James Bond movies. So | I love both mechanical watches for their engineering and smart | watches for what they bring to the table. We dont have to diss | one to make the other feel better. | CydeWeys wrote: | > I suggest picking up a Seiko SKX | | Sadly this advice is a little bit out of date, as the SKX has | been out of production now for a few years and the price on | uses examples has risen above what one is worth (except to | collectors). | | The newer advice is to grab a Seiko 5*. There's a million | different choices, and all the current ones come with the 4R35 | or 4R36 movement, which are better than the 7S26 which was in | the SKX divers. | | * https://www.seikowatches.com/us-en/products/5sports/lineup | Prcmaker wrote: | I've been using the same mechanical watch, more or less every | day, for a little over 12yrs now. Miyota movement, stainless | body, Sapphire window, about $300. In years of machine shop | work the movement survived fine, and has one scratch on window | from some tungsten carbide. | | Has kept brilliant time, maybe a minute a month, and taught me | that my watch being accurate to the second was something that, | for me, just didn't matter. I started working around pulsed | high voltage last year (100kV+) and now it loses a couple | minutes a week. | jclardy wrote: | I've got a cheap Seiko 5, the SNK809. Bought for $50 new in | 2013, wore it for a few years then it moved with me in | drawers for the past 5. I pulled it out last week, wound it | up and it works perfectly, gaining just 4 seconds a day. | cyounkins wrote: | > I started working around pulsed high voltage last year | (100kV+) and now it loses a couple minutes a week. | | Are these two things somehow related to one another? | Prcmaker wrote: | Yes indeed, though not necessarily the cause in this case. | While it could be coincidence, magnetization of components | can result in reduced accuracy. Some companies have started | to release watches with silicon springs, though very | expensive. | brchr wrote: | Watch movements are generally sensitive to magnetic fields, | and can become magnetized and lose accuracy. Some watch | models explicitly advertise their level of resistance to | magnetism, for instance the Rolex Milgauss, which is | designed to withstand 1,000 ("mille") gauss. | DeathArrow wrote: | Omega has watches that are METAS certified, so they | resist up to 15000 gauss. They use silicon balance and | silicon escapement. | DeathArrow wrote: | > I started working around pulsed high voltage last year | (100kV+) and now it loses a couple minutes a week. | | There are antimagnetic watches. Or you can use a cheap watch | demagnetizer. | Prcmaker wrote: | A demagnetizer is on the shopping list, but at the same | time, a quick adjustment every now and then is easy enough. | I also love my watch, so a switch to antimagnetic isn't | high on my priorities. | eganist wrote: | > one scratch on window from some tungsten carbide. | | Checks out. Tungsten Carbide and Corundum (sapphire watch | crystals, the hardest watch crystal in use) have the same | Mohs hardness of 9 and will scratch each other. | | And I'd guess that a $300 watch probably doesn't use Corundum | but rather mineral glass. | Prcmaker wrote: | County comm mid pilot watch, it's advertised as Sapphire. | Comparing with colleagues at the time, it was a far sight | tougher than their watches. | jclardy wrote: | I feel the same way, I write software for a living and I'm sure | an outsider browsing through the thousands of lines of code in | my codebases everyday would be confused, but I get that same | feeling when looking at a mechanical watch. To think that | people were building the first mechanical timepieces 500 years | ago, just a hundred or so years after the printing press is | incredible to me. How did they even create parts that tiny so | accurately? | criddell wrote: | A mechanical watch needs regular service which is usually just | cleaning, lubricating, replacing seals and springs. Eventually | it will need replacement parts and that is probably the end of | life for the watch. | | There are a some brands that will service every watch they've | ever made, fabricating new parts as needed. Few of us can | afford one of those. | ajuc wrote: | My grandma has a mechanical watch she only wears on sundays - | to the church. Whenever I was visiting her she asks me to | wind it up for her before the mass. She uses this same watch | for over 30 years with minimal maintenance, and it's not an | expansive brand, just a good noname watch. | kijin wrote: | The parts last quite some time if properly maintained. If | you're worried about replacement parts availability, stick | with the most popular movements such as the ETA2824/SW200 | series or Seiko's NH35 series. | room505 wrote: | Don't forget Citizen's Miyota 9000 series! | criddell wrote: | A lot of watch fans are happy when they see a watch brand | use an in-house movement. I'm exactly the opposite for the | reason you say - the popular movements are going to be | easily and inexpensively serviced for much longer. | | That said, a lot of in-house movements are little more than | tweaks and high end finishing applied to existing commodity | movements. | mickael-kerjean wrote: | Ever since I picked the hobby of fixing old mechanical | watch, in house movement is my number 1 criteria for not | buying because of the availability of parts. | kijin wrote: | Exactly. The flip side of the recent proliferation of | "barely in-house" movements is that there's actually even | less diversity of movements in the mid-range watch market | than the brands would have you believe. So in the long | term, it's going to be fairly easy to get any of them | serviced. Just replace some springs and gears with | compatible parts from a 2824/2892/7750/whatever and stick | the brand's pretty rotor back on. | _fat_santa wrote: | I'm with you on this. I see a ton of custom watches that | end up using a Seiko automatic movement or an ETA. A bit | like Lotus using Toyota Camry engines. | kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote: | Not just custom - Seiko used to (still does maybe) | provide manufacturers with bare movements, even with the | company name on it. That means you'll find "no name" | watches from the 60s onward with Seiko movements. That | makes servicing, repairing and replacing them much easier | and cheaper. Same with ETA. | yobbo wrote: | For example, the size and fit of Seiko "calibers" are the | same going back further than NH35, which means far older | watches can accept NH35 as replacements. Even sub- | assemblies and parts of NH35 fit straight onto 7s26s from | the 90s. | | NH35 can be serviced, but makes more sense an assembled | replacement part. The same argument can probably made for | the entire watch. The appeal of using one watch for 30 | years is more in romantic fantasy than practicality. | JohnBooty wrote: | They last longer if you wear them, say, several times a month | - i.e. if you have a rotation with several quartz watches and | several mechanical ones. They definitely will last decades | that way. | | As others have noted, if you own a well-known brand like a | Seiko you can easily purchase an entirely new movement for | $50-$75 and this should take a watchmaker no more than one | hour of labor or you can DIY. (Many non-Seiko brands use | NH35/36 movements, which are made by Seiko) | bmj wrote: | Will Seiko provide parts for older watches? I just got | stuck with a bricked Swiss Army quartz watch because no one | can get parts for it (it's 20 years old). I'm very tempted | by some of the more affordable Seiko mechanical/automatic | models, but I'd like the watch to last at least a decade or | so. | JohnBooty wrote: | Sadly, I'm not aware of any specific "we will continue to | manufacture parts for X years" guarantees from Seiko. | | Still, though - keep in mind that entire Seiko movement | can be bought for like $50-75. And many of their most | common movements are interchangeable. For example, an | older 7S26 can be replaced with a new NH36 that sells for | about $50. | https://chronometercheck.com/seiko-7s26-movement/ | | It's not entirely unfeasible to imagine buying a spare | movement or three if you were, say, planning on doing | sort of a heirloom thing and wanted to ensure a supply of | parts N decades into the future. | twobitshifter wrote: | I have seiko automatic which kept great time when I first | bought it, but not long after, it slipped off my wrist and | fell on the tile floor. Since then it has been losing time | but no so much as to be a huge problem. Would service easily | fix this or is it just something to live with? | elxr wrote: | Should be a simple fix. It might just need regulation on | the balance wheel (super quick, no need to disassemble the | whole movement), or one of the pinions might be bent (just | replace that wheel). | | Take it to a watchmaker, a fix like this would be pretty | straightforward. | dwringer wrote: | It may or may not be easy to fix properly, but if it's an | inexpensive Seiko it may not be worth doing that, just | replacing the movement when it wears out completely. | | That said, simply adjusting the tick rate to regulate | timekeeping is very easy and if you've got steady hands and | a sharp eye then you can do it yourself with a wooden | toothpick, assuming you've got a tool to remove the watch | back. Any shop (offering repair facilities) could do it as | well in a matter of minutes. | sausagefeet wrote: | Seiko makes a huge range of watches so: it depends. If it's | a cheaper one, just buy a new one. If it's a mid-range one, | you can just buy a new movement for under $100 and toss it | in with a few tools. Lots of tutorials on YouTube. | gambiting wrote: | To that point - yes, but it's less expensive than many people | think. I got a vintage 1970 Omega Seamaster in very good | condition some time ago, paid less than PS1000 for it. It | kept very good time, no issues with it, but I decided that | since it turned 50 recently I'm going to treat it to a full | Omega service with an authorized workshop, paid PS495 - that | included replacement original parts from Omega, which of | course they still stock and make for this watch, because well | - it's Omega. | | I asked them how this works, and they said anything younger | than 80 years Omega just sends them parts without any issue, | anything older they have to send back to Switzerland for | service, and yes, then Omega might have to manufacture the | parts required on the spot - and yes, that then turns really | expensive. | snemvalts wrote: | A solar quartz fits this more. Those don't even require | movement or correcting as often as with mechanical watches. | Just light | kijin wrote: | The solar Casio I bought as a teenager stopped holding a | usable charge after a few winters. Maybe it was just bad | luck. I'll see if the new Citizen Eco-Drive in my | collection lives up to the 40 years claim I saw elsewhere. | :) | TMWNN wrote: | My experience with a very high-end solar Casio was akin | to yours, with the battery needing replacing after about | five years. Perhaps gambiting is correct about the common | nature of the battery, but multiple watch repair shops | (both in a department store, and the "old man in a tiny | room in an office building" type) refused to deal with | it. I always had to mail it to an authorized Casio repair | outlet. | | I do not know whether this also applies to Eco-Drive. | [deleted] | gambiting wrote: | Solar Casios(I own two) have a replaceable rechargable | battery, it costs very little and isn't more difficult to | replace than any other watch battery. | | It usually is this one in almost all their models: | | https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0080GQBTU/ref=cm_sw_r_awdo_X | X5J... | onosendai wrote: | The first Eco-Drives came out in the mid 90s. If you look | around you'll find quite a few reports from people who | bought the very first ones, and which are still ticking | away virtually maintenance-free for 25+ years and | counting. My own, a dive watch with around 10 years, | which has actually been used for its stated purpose, is | also still problem-free and with zero maintenance so far. | | The only thing you need to be mindful of with Eco-Drives | is that you can't let it lose all charge. It can keep | functioning in complete darkness for around 6 months, | according to the specs, but if you do this enough times | the battery will lose the ability to hold charge and will | need to be replaced, and there are plenty of reports to | this effect. If you're not planning on wearing it, just | leave it somewhere that it can get natural light, instead | of a drawer, and you should be good. | | While mechanical watches are undoubtedly cool and | elegant, they're not perfect timekeepers, and when they | do need maintenance it's not something trivial which you | can perform yourself. For my day-to-day watch I'll take | an accurate quartz movement with virtually zero | maintenance any day. In other words an Eco-Drive, or | something similar. | donthellbanme wrote: | Parts rarely fail on watches from the 50's on, especially the | better made watches that are sealed. Even those that arn't | sealed very well, the parts seem to last. | | If a part does fail, it's usually the old blue steel | mainsprings. | | They can be replaced with modern White-Alloy springs. (That | is just a brand name.) | | Watches are my thing. I don't know why I like them so much, | but do. | | Servicing does take awhile to learn though. That whole 10,000 | hrs probally. Servicing a watch does not take that long to | learn. I'm talking about making parts with a Jeweler's lathe. | And getting to the point where you know those parts well | enough to visualize exactly what's wrong with a timepiece by | looking at it. | | If you did learn to clean/oil your mechanical watch, it's | something that will be passed down to loved ones. | | Oh yea, Service a mechanical watch when it stops keeping good | time. That is unless you take it in the water. | | I know a watchmaker who told his father he needed to Service | his gifted wristwatch. His father got it 30 years ago as a | present, and just wore it daily. The watchmaker was expecting | dried up oil, but to his astonishment, the oil was still | there. It was hermetically sealed. Oils do breakdown, but he | couldn't find any damage to parts using a 40x stereoscope. | zppln wrote: | An SKX isn't gonna outlive you and once it fails they'll just | replace the entire movement anyway. | | Mechanical watches are still indeed cool though. :) | ghostpepper wrote: | As an owner of an SKX who doesn't know much about watch | longevity, how long can I expect it to last? Are there other | automatics that will outlast a person's life? | | It still blows my mind that you can take the SKX scuba | diving, especially when you factor in the price. | | This may sound cynical but as I get older and see the world | becoming more and more digital and connected, I find myself | appreciating analog, mechanical things like watches and old | cars more and more. | yobbo wrote: | I have a 7s26A movement out of a late 90s SKX which was | unserviceable, and another 7s26C became unusable after 4-5 | months of use. | | I also have a replacement 7s26C which worked flawlessly | [-5,+5] s/d out of the box and a year so far, and another | watch with NH35 which still holds [-5,+5] s/d after seven | years of daily use. | | There are stories of SKX:s which hold good time after 20 | years. | | There are much cheaper watches than SKX (at their current | prices) that will withstand the depth, see "Beyond on the | press" pressure chamber tests, for example | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ti-GdfGbj4Y | criddell wrote: | If you are going to take your SKX diving, you probably want | to have a watchmaker pressure test it once in a while and | make repairs as needed. The seals dry out and water will | get in. | jstanley wrote: | I think maintenance requirements are overstated. I wore a | relatively cheap (~PS120) mechanical watch continuously for | about 8 years, and never had a single problem with it. I | only stopped wearing it about 2 years ago when I finally | bought a smartwatch. It still works fine, I just don't wear | it except on special occasions. | | If your watch is a sizable investment then maybe you care | about maintenance more, but otherwise I wouldn't worry that | it's going to stop working in short order. | CydeWeys wrote: | > Are there other automatics that will outlast a person's | life? | | Very unlikely. You do hear the occasional story of a | mechanical watch running fine for several decades without | requiring any servicing, but there's a lot of survivorship | bias at play there. It's extremely unlikely to go ~8 | decades without needing servicing. Keep in mind there are | lubricants at various places in the movement that are | essential to proper operation that evaporate/denature over | time. | mmcgaha wrote: | My father's Seiko from the late 70s still keeps time at | around 30 seconds per day. It has never been serviced so I | am sure it is bone dry and really should not be run. I | regularly wear a 2015 Seiko that used to be 8 seconds per | day fast but has fallen to 5 seconds per day slow so it is | probably time to service it. My two newest watches are from | 2017 and 2021 and they are consistent since break in. So | given my limited number of data points, I would say 5-7 | years between service but if you just want to wear it until | it dies, 10+ years is probably reasonable. | | On a side note, I have read about 40 year old Seikos being | worn daily without service but that sure feels outside of | the norm. | kijin wrote: | Mechanical watches can last a lifetime (or more) if | properly maintained and periodically serviced, just like | old cars. | | People all over the world pass down their Rolexes and | Omegas, still ticking, to their children and even | grandchildren. Patek Philippe is well known for their | slogan, "You never actually own a Patek Philippe. You | merely look after it for the next generation," showing | confidence in the longevity of their watches. | | Of course those are very expensive brands, but I think part | of what makes expensive watches last longer is that their | owners take good care of them. Few people bother to get | their SKX checked up on a regular schedule, on the other | hand, because they're so cheap and easily replaceable by | first-world standards. | approxim8ion wrote: | They also cost a ton to service. It's nice if the | sentiment of carrying something through the years appeals | to you, but the thing that keeps me away from mechanical | watches is the service costs compared to the odd battery | replacement on a quartz. | iamben wrote: | Agree with you so much. It still feels absolutely magical | wearing one. The SKX007 was my first automatic watch and I wore | it daily for 10 years. Incredible thing. | karolist wrote: | Still love my SKX007J though I don't wear it as much once I | got in the habit of step counting, maybe I should start | wearing two watches... | _fat_santa wrote: | I actually have an SKX013 which I like wayyy more than the | 007. Basically the same watch but that 39MM size is perfect. | iamben wrote: | I wear a 39mm watch as my daily now. I agree - fantastic | size! | domh wrote: | I have a couple of Seiko automatic watches, but I recently | picked up an SNK809 as a new daily driver: | https://www.benswatchclub.com/blog/seiko-5-military-review. For | PS120/$130, it's cheap enough to wear every day and it looks | great. The amount of mechanical complexity and engineering that | goes into it for that price is mind blowing. | NoGravitas wrote: | I have an automatic mechanical watch - a Seiko 5. It loses | about 5 minutes a day. It might only need an adjustment to | calibrate it, but that would require a watchmaker. I think the | last one in town just went out of business, and even if he | hadn't, the cost of his labor would be greater than the cost of | the watch. | yobbo wrote: | > It loses about 5 minutes a day | | This suggests it's completely out of spec, and maybe beyond | saving. However, regulating functioning Seiko movements is | certainly within reach for enthusiasts using a timegrapher | device, or software with a microphone. Persistently adjusting | over a few days, it should be able to get within -10,+10 | seconds per day. | | The timegrapher will also reveal the condition of the | movement and whether further work is worthwhile. Servicing | these movements is likely more expensive than replacing them. | Ancapistani wrote: | It's not hard to make the adjustment, but you need a | timegrapher to measure the results in a reasonable time. | | I've adjusted a couple of my watches over the course of a | week or two by making small adjustments, noting the time, | wearing it for a day, and then noting how much the time had | changed versus a "known good" time. It's a pain but doable. | | There are mobile apps that use the phone's microphone to | measure the watch's "ticks" and graph them for you. They | aren't anywhere near as accurate as a "real" timegrapher but | they'll get you close enough. | | At one point I had about a dozen mechanical watches. These | days I have three, and only one that I wear almost | exclusively. It's a Maratac Mid-Pilot, which uses a Miyota | 8245 movement. I've used the "adjust and check later" method | to adjust it, and it loses about 10s per week - well within | the acceptable range. | | The other two that I've kept are a Seagull 1963, which I wear | as a "dress watch", and a Vostok Retro 1934, which I | sometimes wear when I want a change of pace. It has a white | face and I have a variety of brightly-colored straps for it. | | One day I'll step up and buy a Hamilton, but I'm still | savoring the serotonin from looking at them and anticipating | :). | hoseja wrote: | Why wouldn't they be accurate? You have a fairly precise | 44kHz sampling rate, the only issue might be identifying | the ticks. | CydeWeys wrote: | > but you need a timegrapher to measure the results in a | reasonable time. | | This is just an app now. All a timegrapher is is a | microphone and software, and, well, your phone has all | that. This is the app I use; I highly recommend it: https:/ | /play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.watchaccur... | kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote: | Tickoprint is another app for android that works great | bluetomcat wrote: | > Maybe it's just knowing that you have this perpetually | winding machine on your hand | | It's a mechanical device which stores energy in a spring | barrel, and consumes it through a set of gears to produce | constant velocity motion. | sparker72678 wrote: | This rings especially true when you live and work in an | ephemeral digital environment. I find mechanical devices of all | kinds _grounding_. No batteries, no upgrades, no security | vulnerabilities, no dependency hell. | rkangel wrote: | I keep considering a mechanical watch, but I think I'd find the | accuracy a bit tedious - having to continually adjust it every | week so that I didn't arrive late to appointments. | | I like a watch that gets out of the way - it just works. I've | got a Citizen watch a little like this: | https://www.citizenwatch.co.uk/stiletto-ar1130-81a.html | | It's a quartz watch, powered by solar power through the face. | It has 'just worked' for as long as I've had it. From an | accuracy point of view, it loses negligible amounts over the | several month interval between me being forced to adjust it | anyway (daylight savings, international travel). | alfalfasprout wrote: | It depends on the movement in the watch. Any COSC chronometer | movement will hold +4/-6s per day which worst case is under a | minute lost per week. Typically the error is much smaller. | 93po wrote: | You can always get a spring drive from grand seiko - it's | mechanical (with an "brake" driven by an integrated circuit, | but still no battery) but basically only gets a few seconds | off per year. Lowest price point for those is like $5k | though. | rkangel wrote: | I do love Seiko watches. That's probably a little steep for | me but I'll have a look! | therealplato wrote: | you can expect a quality automatic movement (imo seiko is | lowest end of quality) to be off on the order of single digit | minutes per month | esaym wrote: | If this makes you think mechanical watches are cool but you don't | really want to wear one.. you can go the other direction. Ebay is | full of old mechanical driven (be it pendulum or wound springs) | wall clocks that are looking for new owners. | 1-6 wrote: | Certainly a labor of love. Well done! | tokujin wrote: | How can I save the page with the interactive animations to my | computer? | | I'm using wget --page-requisites \ | --span-hosts \ --execute robots=off \ | --adjust-extension \ --convert-links \ | https://ciechanow.ski/mechanical-watch/ | | but I get "Loading..." messages in place of the animations when I | open the saved html on Firefox. | clord wrote: | > when we pull the crown all the way out to enter the time | setting mode, that stop lever blocks the balance wheel, which | stops the watch in an action known as hacking | | whoa, is this the origin of the word "hacking" in the "throw | something into the wheels to make it work" sense? very | interesting. | e1ghtSpace wrote: | Well, you can also hack away at a tree with an axe. | rammy1234 wrote: | I found this interesting. For more mechanical watch reference - | https://www.timezone.com/2003/10/04/mechanical-watch-faq/ | shepherdjerred wrote: | Every post from this site is gold. I've learned so much from it. | gotaquestion wrote: | There are many centuries of engineering behind this. I went to | the Museum of Horology in Austria. It has examples of the first | mechanical clocks, up to today's timepieces. It is fascinating | looking at the giant, wrought-iron town clocks that kept shitty | time and bent and rusted, and seeing different parts of the clock | evolve over the years, especially as engineering & metallurgy | improved. | | https://www.watchtime.com/featured/watch-spotting-at-the-vie... | niviksha wrote: | This blog itself is a work of art, like mechanical watches | themselves | spaetzleesser wrote: | I got this wooden clock for Christmas a while ago: | https://smile.amazon.com/ROKR-Mechanical-Building-Supplies-B... | | Definitely helped me to understand how clocks work. And it's fun | to watch it. | avestura wrote: | This man is marvelous. Even though I know how top-notch he is at | writing interactive blog posts, he surprises me with his quality | every time I open his new blog posts. Bartosz is a huge | inspiration for me. | pcurve wrote: | I don't make this comparison lightly but I'm reminded of | Leonardo DaVinci. How much talent does one need to create | something like this? It's not enough to be just 'good' at | engineering, design, watchmaking, and writing... you have to be | amazing at it ALL of it. AND have motivation to do it. | | I'm just in awe. | moffkalast wrote: | I read the GPS one a few months back, he absolutely amazingly | explained the whole thing to a depth I never would've expected. | Liron wrote: | He's elevated technical explanations to a delicious art form | leeoniya wrote: | same with https://www.youtube.com/c/3blue1brown | muh_gradle wrote: | Enjoyed this one very much. I am hoping to get a blue dial Orient | Bambino to wear for my wedding. I've always loved that watch. | I'll have to refer to this article to explain the "but why | mechanical.." question. | ubermonkey wrote: | This is really, really beautiful and cool. | bacon_waffle wrote: | For folks who are interested in the subject matter: electronic | tuning fork movements, like the Accutron 214, are amazingly | elegant bits of engineering. Both the time regulation and motive | power are provided by a tuning fork (vs the balance wheel and | mainspring), which is kept oscillating through electromagnetism | (vs the escapement) in one of the first consumer applications of | the transistor. The movement was designed and started being | manufactured in the late 1950s. | | Max Hetzel's patents are a good starting point - | https://www.accutrons.com/tuning-fork-watch-patents | _asummers wrote: | I love 1940s/1950s instruction videos. Here's one from Hamilton | that shows how they work that I really like. | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rL0_vOw6eCc | smetj wrote: | Will we still be able to find and consult this mesmerizing piece | of documentation art in let's say .... 100 years? Pretty sure | mechanical watches will still exist then. | sunpazed wrote: | What an awesome explainer! I love mechanical watches. I have a | relatively cheap Stowa Antea which runs a simple hand-wound | Peseux/ETA 7001. It's so thin, the entire watch is less than 7mm | thick. All of what you see in this explainer is crammed into that | tiny space the size of a stamp. | jagged-chisel wrote: | That scale can't be right. Pocket watches are bigger than a | quarter. | vladde wrote: | They have other blog posts as well, all equally interesting and | detailed. | jagger27 wrote: | https://web.archive.org/web/20220504151534/https://ciechanow... | beeforpork wrote: | Amazing! He's done it again, I am blown away! Thanks you very | much for this unmatched level of documentation quality! | elorant wrote: | I'd gladly pay for content like this. It's so informative. I've | watched yt channels of people who disassemble and fix automatic | watches, but never understood all the intricacies in such detail. | This is what journalism, or writing in general, should be about. | Explain things and go into details. | [deleted] | JohnBooty wrote: | The author has a Patreon, so we really can pay for his content. | =) | | https://www.patreon.com/ciechanowski/posts | s1mon wrote: | One thing that hasn't been mentioned is how the parts were | modeled. I asked @BCiechanowski on Twitter and the response was | "Modeled in Shapr3D [0], animated manually in JS". Another person | asked about the gears, and he said "Gears are just generated | programmatically, it made it very easy to tweak their shape as | needed". | | Overall, a fascinating workflow. | | [0] https://www.shapr3d.com | smusamashah wrote: | All of articles from this blog are worth archiving and putting in | a library in this exact interactive form forever. I never | understood mechanical watches before. Now I know exactly how they | are made possible. Thanks for explaining it visually while | interaction with the visuals. | cbdumas wrote: | This page got the HN hug of death it seems. Absolutely deserves | all the traffic he is getting, Mr. Ciechanowski's blog is an | absolute gem. | naikrovek wrote: | Normally I would crap (pretty hard) on web tech, because | normally, it's only ever used to make websites harder to follow | in the name of design, or to create new ways for ads to be served | to me. | | This site, and the most recent blog entries on this site, are | excellent examples of why web technologies are not all bad. | People seeking new ways to make money make everything bad, | eventually, and thankfully there are bastions of utility without | sales still to be found, sprinkled around. | tomaskafka wrote: | What is wrong about trying to find ways to produce a nice stuff | and keep being to able to pay the rent and raise kids? | | I run a small and nice visual weather app for Apple Watch and | iPhone (https://weathergraph.app). Some people in reviews | object to price, but if I wasn't able to charge a subscription | (because weather data costs money continuously), there would be | no app. And if I wasn't able to make (about 50 % there right | now) a living, I would work for a corporation like I did | before, and I wouldn't be able to dedicate enough time to make | it great -\\_(tsu)_/-. | yakshaving_jgt wrote: | People trying to make money is actually what drives rather a | lot of the innovation that you enjoy every day. | | The "capitalism bad" trope is a tired one indeed. | naikrovek wrote: | nah, people trying to make enough money don't create | Facebook. people trying to have enough to live comfortably | don't create Amazon. | | monsters create those companies, and monsters grow them. | | growing larger and more profitable at any cost is called | metastasis, and that's what's happening. lives get worse for | most while the cancers grow and grow, almost unabated. | naikrovek wrote: | I'll add that if you work at a place like this, you are | part of the problem. your votes do not absolve you. | sarang23592 wrote: | What an insanely cool demo of the workings. This is so | informative. I mostly dismiss such stuff thinking I won't | understand it but this one was easy to follow even for me. Loved | it | jonsen wrote: | I was reminded of the great video lecture | | Gerald Sussman Teaches Mechanical Watch Ideas at MIT: | | https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TWQN8Yf1g70 | krosaen wrote: | Thanks for this! | xcambar wrote: | This article is everything I want the Internet to be: high | quality contents and high interactivity so that the matter is | more "palpable". | | This is peak Internet, huge congrats to the author(s). | CryptoPunk wrote: | I think it also points to compensation for creators, so that | they can dedicate their time to creating their works, | mattering. I think him being on Patreon, and knowing he can | count on income as long as he keeps creating this kind of | content, contributes to the quality of what is produced. | | I believe when someone no longer needs to concern themselves | with financial consequences for taking time out of their day to | create content for the public, and knows that there is | reciprocity in the relationship between themselves and the rest | of the world for whom they produce content, they can dedicate | themselves more completely to their craft. | DangitBobby wrote: | I have favorited just a handful of things on this site. TFA and | another one on the same blog about internal combustion engines. | Prepare to be wowed. | | https://ciechanow.ski/internal-combustion-engine/ | hexo wrote: | There are no images, like, why? :( | hexo wrote: | Your downvotes didn't bring images back on site. | rocqua wrote: | I have a mechanical watch. I wish it was quartz. I simply could | not find any quartz watch in a style I liked. I even prefer thin | watches. | | I feel like the field of actually nicely designed quartz watches | is dead from competition with mechanical and smart watches. Where | smart watches are just ugly, and mechanical watches look amazing | but are more hobby or conversation pieces than actually good for | telling time. | amai wrote: | In 20 years we will see similar visualizations about car engines | which used petrol instead of electricity. We will be awed by the | complex mechanisms, which were necessary at that time to make a | car drive as we are awed now by the complexities of mechanical | watches. | zwog wrote: | You don't have to wait 20 years, he did one last year: | https://ciechanow.ski/internal-combustion-engine/ | adulion wrote: | mechanical watches fascinate me, i joined /r/seikomods and | assmbled one form parts i found of ebay. | gjvc wrote: | This is what the web should be all about. | jIyajbe wrote: | Wow. I had no idea how intricate and CLEVER the mechanism of a | mechanical watch is. Being no engineer, I cannot imagine how | someone could think of all these clever designs. (Yes, of course | the mechanism evolved over time. Even so.) | | I have been wanting to buy an old mechanical watch. When I do, I | will never again complain about how much a watch repair shop | charges. | | Also, the explanation, presentation, and animations are top- | notch. Amazing work by the author!! | SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: | You know, I had the somewhat opposite impression reading the | article. For me, what is interesting isn't the absolute genius | of the design (which of course, it is). I find it more | interesting that the watch has had enough staying power as a | useful machine in society over hundreds of years to have gone | through thousands of design iterations to arrive at the | "genius" design. If you have enough smart engineers over | several hundred years working at a problem, such an elegant | design seems almost an inevitability to me. | | I would call it "clever" if one or two engineers created this | over perhaps a decade or so. With thousands of engineers over | several hundred years, however, it just feels like the natural | evolution of things. | | I feel that a lot of things happening in today's society will | be the "watch" in 100-200 years. A marvel of complexity at | first glance, and then an acknowledgement of how much "standing | on the shoulders of giants" contributes to things that are | enjoyed on a daily basis. | jnord wrote: | An absolutely amazing article, detailed explanation and beautiful | graphics. Thanks so much for posting! | nintendo1889 wrote: | I always thought a compass that floats in water, and is also a | sundial would be neat. Not super accurate but very good for | military, offgridders and preppers, wherever there's limited | access to power. | nodesocket wrote: | What a fanatic writeup. I've been fascinated with mechanical | watches for what seems like forever. I browse YouTube at night | and see collections by Mr. Wonderful and John Mayer (mostly very | high end collector grade Rolex, Patek, AP, IWC). I actually | splurged and purchased a new Omega Seamaster Professional Diver | 300 automatic and absolutely love it. It does have a see-through | back making watching the caliber 8800 movement hypnotic. | alanbernstein wrote: | I always enjoy reading these, but this one is special for me | because it relates to two back burner projects I'm thinking about | recently: | | 1. building a custom mechanical timer, which I want for practical | use. | | 2. designing a real-world alethiometer - a fictional | watch/compass device with chaotic (magical) behavior - which runs | entirely on clockwork. I've been wondering how to incorporate a | source of significant entropy into a watch movement. One idea, | for example, is something like a double pendulum, but made from | torsion springs. | barbazoo wrote: | I couldn't quite figure it out from the (excellent) writeup but | when you wind up the watch, you wind up the barrel AND the | balance wheel, right? | praash wrote: | The balance wheel gets a small energy push through the | escapement on each tick. The barrel's mainspring has enough | force to just kickstart a stopped balance wheel. The balance | wheel doesn't really need much "winding" - it's equivalent to | the pendulum of a grandfather clock. | | It's really fascinating seeing this mechanism alive, even in a | simple mechanical kitchen timer with plastic gears. When wound | up, the balance wheel starts to swing a little and quickly | accelerates on each tick. | vanshg wrote: | Same question. The balance wheel/hairspring has to be losing | energy overtime to friction (however miniscule). Otherwise we | have ourselves a perpetual motion machine | panki27 wrote: | This is mentioned in the article. The pallet fork gives the | balance wheel a small push after unlocking, giving it a tiny | bit of extra momentum. | alfalfasprout wrote: | To add to the other answer, that friction (and the intertia | of the balance wheel) is actually factored in when regulating | the watch. The pallet fork gives the balance wheel a nudge on | every "Tick" then the pallet fork stays stuck until the | balance wheel swings around and back and jolts it in the | other direction (the tock). Basically a little bit of energy | is released from the mainspring via the escapement to the | pallet fork to the balance wheel on each tick/tock. | aliljet wrote: | This may not be the most valuable comment, but my goodness, the | quality of this writeup and it's interactive descriptions of | complex mechanical components AND their interactions is radically | impressive. The treatment of complex topics in deeply visual and | partially interactive ways, for me at least, is a remarkably | helpful way to learn. | unfocused wrote: | Agreed! This is top quality writing AND interactive | illustrations. | [deleted] | sixothree wrote: | Does anyone know the tooling used to create these? | phailhaus wrote: | According to his Twitter, he just uses bare canvas and WebGL. | [1] What a legend. You can inspect the page and read the | source js, it is unminified. | | [1] https://twitter.com/BCiechanowski/status/1484013009219375 | 105... | amelius wrote: | Very impressive. The only thing that would make it better | is a physics engine that would allow the user to play with | gears etc. | ManuelKiessling wrote: | You mean like https://ciechanow.ski/gears/ ? | [deleted] | tomtheelder wrote: | I almost couldn't believe the quality of this while reading it. | Not just animations, but _simulations_? That perfectly | illustrate the concept being discussed? Incredible. Not to | mention the incredibly clear and articulate prose. | soheil wrote: | To be 100% honest I found it very intimidating to even begin | reading it. It's such a time sink (no pun intended) and a huge | wall of text (with figures and interactivity nonetheless). | duderific wrote: | I usually get about half way through his posts, see how much | is left and just give up. Nonetheless I get a lot out of | them. | cardinalfang wrote: | The end was the best bit. I have seen good explanations of | the escapement and timing gears before, but not of the | crown adjuster mechanisms. | surement wrote: | The author calling this a "blog post" really undersold it! | causi wrote: | True multimedia is a lost art. We had it back in the 90s when | software came on discs and it was a high-density, polished | product that combined text, audio, video, and interactive | elements on the same page. The internet taking over turned | everything back into text, and then as bandwidth grew the only | thing we thought to use it on was higher and higher bitrate | video. | | When I was a kid I thought the future was going to be fully- | integrated data. Like I would be able to pause a movie and | click on anything I was seeing to get more information. Click | an actor, get his bio and interviews about the movie and | bloopers. Click a vehicle and get its model. Click a special | effect and see how it was done or an animal and learn about | that animal. Imagine watching Lord of the Rings and being able | to instantly read the original lore of any object, location, or | character just by clicking/tapping it. Hell, even the smallest | things can radically change your experience. Imagine if | Wikipedia articles had appropriate background music. I guess | there's just no market. | ezconnect wrote: | That was also my dream when I first saw the CD encyclopedia | and seeing the first demo of AR using google maps of pointing | your phone to a building and seeing information about it and | then the introduction of google glass, then it all suddenly | disappeared. | throwaway821909 wrote: | Last time I used Amazon Prime Video, around 2017, it would | show info that Amazon deemed relevant for that bit of the | show (apparently it's called X-Ray). Back then at least, it | wasn't on the same level as what you described but still | something. | | The danger was it made me want to pause all the time in case | I missed something interesting, but by putting the user in | control of what they get info on, you could avoid that. | reaperducer wrote: | _Last time I used Amazon Prime Video, around 2017, it would | show info that Amazon deemed relevant for that bit of the | show (apparently it 's called X-Ray)._ | | X-Ray still exists, but the only way I've ever seen it used | is to tell you what the background music is, and the names | of all the actors in a scene. But even then, it is often | incomplete. | mFixman wrote: | The Kindle has a similar feature for some of its native | book: if you long-click in the name of a character it would | give you a short description and a timeline of where it | appeared in prior parts of the books (with future parts | hidden to prevent spoilers). | reaperducer wrote: | _Like I would be able to pause a movie and click on anything | I was seeing to get more information_ | | I remember the cable companies promising this when everything | went "digital." | | I also remember when the movie studios promised us one of the | big advantages of DVDs over VHS was that we could watch the | scenes of a movie from any angle? | | Yeah, that never happened. | rapind wrote: | And the director / talent commentary tracks, which were | sometimes really great (Vanilla Sky comes to mind). I think | that was only common for a really brief period | unfortunately. To be honest I think it just failed from a | market perspective (cost vs revenue). I could be wrong and | maybe it still happens a lot? | | Suspect the angles thing was the same. Sounded cool but no | one wanted it (or to pay extra for it). | causi wrote: | It still happens a lot but those tracks rarely make it | onto the streaming service copy. Usually you need to buy | the disc version. | ghostbrainalpha wrote: | There is absolutely a market for your LOTR example. I think a | kickstarter made LOTR or Harry Potter Interactive | applications like you are purposing could charge $1,000 | maybe. | | And I 100% align with your 90's prediction. What we gained | going from Encarta to Wikipedia was amazing, but we shouldn't | forget that we lost some things too. | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=po3yW-wdLr0 | gman83 wrote: | Couldn't the Wikimedia Foundation raise some money to | produce these kinds of videos? I wonder why they don't. | skyfaller wrote: | I think one problem is that it's difficult to make videos | easy for anyone to edit, the way a wiki text page is. | | - The skills to edit video are more difficult to acquire, | in part because - The hardware and software requirements | can be expensive, and are not universally available - | Once you've made a video, not everyone has the bandwidth | to view it in high quality (certainly the first step to | editing it) | | Wikimedia could hire people to make videos, but they | could also hire people to write articles, and | (generally?) don't because that's not how they roll. | | A Wikipedia-like platform for video would be fascinating, | and worth pursuing, but a significant technological and | social challenge. | mgdlbp wrote: | There's Wikimedia Commons! It even (somewhat) addresses | this particular issue by having a system for requesting | specialized media-related edits--video editing, photo | retouching, SVG editing, mapmaking, etc. | | For the unaware, Commons, a repository of media files, is | but one of many Wikimedia "projects" (including | Wikipedia). It's mostly used for images, but also hosts | video, audio (including MIDI), 3D models (only STLs), and | PDFs.Aside: considering what the Foundation seems to like | doing, I'm surprised they don't do more to promote the | "other" projects, especially to Wikipedia contributors-- | Wikipedia editors (even split by language) vastly | outnumber those of the other projects, including Commons | and Wikidata, which are multilingual. | | Commons' request system connects those who recognize | needed edits but cannot make them with those who check | the requests pages and _are_ able to. There 's the | _Graphics Lab_ [0] for edits to existing uploads, and | _File requests_ [1] for new uploads that are needed. | Judging by the archives, they seem quite underutilized, | though that might only be a sign of how few Commons | contributors there are. Probably also has to do with the | offloading of requests to local pages in many languages | of Wikipedia.[2] | | [0] | https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Graphic_Lab | | [1] | https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:File_requests | | [2] https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5324355 | | There's an interesting variation in the nature of | barriers to being able to edit. Hardware and bandwidth | cost money, but skills cost only time and software can be | free. I'd say the Graphics Lab does decently in "teaching | how to fish" through tutorials and lists of FOSS | software. This contrasts with file requests, where | there's no equivalent, because the most common reason | that someone can't take a photo of something is that | there physically aren't any instances of it nearby. | | This kind of barrier to contribution really isn't | specific to media; analogously, not everyone has access | to the same resources for researching edits to Wikipedia. | Wikimedia's also trying to address that: everyone with | >10 monthly edits in any project has free access to the | databases participating in The Wikipedia Library.[3] Most | are relatively specialized, however (IIRC, JSTOR is the | most generally useful of the lot). | | [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/The_Wikipedia_Library | zozbot234 wrote: | You can already put instructional videos on Wikiversity. | | You're right that the editing workflow for raw video is a | challenge, but I expect that support for editable | animations, interactive simulation, etc. will also be | added at some point. It requires some infrastructure for | editing securely sandboxed code in-wiki, which is in the | works anyway for the upcoming project Wikifunctions. | digisign wrote: | There is a movie player that would highlight the | character/actor on screen at the moment you hit pause. There | is a link to find out more that would take you to the | appropriate web page with the info. | | I want to say it was google play, but not completely sure. | rkangel wrote: | Amazon Prime Video show you information on the actors in | the current scene. If you are (e.g.) chromecasting from a | phone you have it continually on the mobile display while | the film is on the TV. | newaccount74 wrote: | Amazon Prime Video | digisign wrote: | I've never used that, so there must be another one. | randomswede wrote: | The Google Play video player sometimes does it (or at | least sometimes used to). | DeathArrow wrote: | >True multimedia is a lost art. We had it back in the 90s | when software came on discs and it was a high-density, | polished product that combined text, audio, video, and | interactive elements on the same page. | | This reminds me of Microsoft Encarta. | ghaff wrote: | Microsoft sold a bunch of titles for things like music. | They did quite a nice job as I recall during that period | when it was really rather wondrous you could hold all this | information in the palm of your hand. | causi wrote: | Yeah, a 21st-century version of Microsoft Home would be | incredible. | pontus wrote: | I came here to write the exact same thing. Amazing content. | stephbu wrote: | Came here to write the same - that was amazing... | hamburglar wrote: | And in true HN style we react to such objectively awesome | content by having a slapfight over whether the author wrote the | code in the "right" way. | justusthane wrote: | His post on how GPS works is equally excellent[1] (as are, I'm | sure, the rest of his posts). | | [1]: https://ciechanow.ski/gps/ | bambax wrote: | Came here to say the same thing. This incredibly well done, | well written, well executed, well... everything. How does one | find, not only the talent, but the patience to do such | incredible work... Mind boggling. | pcurve wrote: | This might be the single best work of art on the Web I've seen | since 1995. Nothing else even comes close. | alimov wrote: | I think that the person(s) that created the interactive visuals | would find this to be a helpful comment. Radically impressive | is a fitting description. I don't think I've ever seen and | interacted with anything like it, although I imagine people | working with CAD software get to see and mess around with this | kind of stuff pretty frequently. | fuddle wrote: | I wonder how long it took him to put together this blog post? | qorrect wrote: | My first thoughts were "This is what the internet was invented | for". | | So impressive. | remarkEon wrote: | 1000%. | | Sent this to my dad, and can't wait to talk this weekend. When | I was a kid we would tinker around with watches in the basement | but, alas, I had different interests and never really got | around to truly understanding these mechanisms. I don't really | know web development beyond setting up basic pages, but how the | CAD was integrated into this is wonderful and I'd love to see | more posts going through things like human joints or ICE, or | maybe weapons ... other things where we kind of intuitively | _grasp_ how they work, but don 't know the details. This entire | blog seems to do a lot of that. So cool. | positivejam wrote: | He has one on the ICE actually, though I don't have the link | handy. | mbrubeck wrote: | https://ciechanow.ski/internal-combustion-engine/ | remarkEon wrote: | Wonderful! Showed this to my wife who, bless her, hates | stuff like this and she's captivated. | marcodiego wrote: | Nice! Now show us how a mechanical watch with a 3-axis tourbillon | works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TveIl2whXY | KaiserPro wrote: | This is a most excellent writeup. Its so very clear, | understandable, but also precise. | | A word of warning, diving into watches and clocks can be a | time/money sink. | | If you're not careful you'll end up building something like this: | https://www.secretbatcave.co.uk/projects/electromechanical-c... | jrh206 wrote: | This article is fantastic. Beautiful illustrations and | comprehensive explanations. | | Creating something like this takes a lot of work. Consider | supporting the creator on Patreon if you want to enable them to | create more of these: https://www.patreon.com/ciechanowski | eggy wrote: | I started with Greg Daniel's masterpiece: Watchmaking. | | https://www.amazon.com/Watchmaking-George-Daniels/dp/0856677... | mananaysiempre wrote: | Linked at the very end of the long, long page (which, | incidentally, is long). | dutchbrit wrote: | I was about to post the same book. Pretty much a must have if | you get into watchmaking. | eggy wrote: | My late Uncle Vic taught me how to repair clocks and pocket | watches when I was young. I let it go, and returned to re- | learning it with this book. I still dream of completing my | first, from scratch, pocket watch. | anfractuosity wrote: | I've heard of that book before, it sounds really interesting | too! Creating your own mechanism sounds extremely complex, is | that what you're doing? | wrycoder wrote: | That is an absolutely amazing book - how to design and make the | highest quality watches from scratch. At the time, all watch | fabrication was by division of labor, no one made an entire | watch from scratch. | | Daniels also wrote a riveting autobiography. He rose from the | most abject poverty to world eminence, largely because of the | British guild system. | | He also collected, restored, and raced old cars. He used to | drive his Blower Bentley to his gentlemen's club (!) in | London[0]. All this is described in his autobiography. | | He needed to do business in Switzerland, so he simply drove his | restored Rolls-Royce across the Continent. | | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bentley_Blower_No.1 | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Daniels_(watchmaker) | zlippslip wrote: | My brother is a watch maker and fixer. It's an art that's | becoming rarer and rarer with the advent of smart watches. | Although his job is surprisingly secure because very wealthy | people tend to pay a lot for their very fancy watches to be fixed | or made. It's kind of sad how far we're moving from watches which | last hundreds of years as heirlooms with minimal maintenance, to | electronic waste generating items with components made as cheaply | as possible and at most last several years before their | irreplaceable battery dies and you purchase another. | | Watches are robust technologies that work without internet | connectivity, are crafted/maintained by people paying attention | to mechanical parts that are sometimes about as thin as human | hairs. Humans have used them for hundreds of years and they are | really freaking cool. | | If you think the animation is awesome(it is), consider owning the | real thing. Not just for my brother's sake, but maybe for your | families. | zerop wrote: | Since everyone is appreciating the. writeup for details, | comprehensive and animation done by author, I was thinking if | there is any library/platform to build such tools/animations so | that masses of teachers, who can write good content, can write | and animate like this. This would really make learning experience | impressive. | xjconlyme wrote: | This one is insanely good. | ramtatatam wrote: | If I was born 20 years before I was born I would be able to | enroll in clock-making faculty in University of Technology I | graduated. They discontinued this faculty, and the only remaining | part was a course of precise mechanics I received.. | | This article is pure gold. It makes me thinking how much of know- | how is already lost and how much can we find in some old book | stores... I'd buy a book about clock making. | rotanibmocy2 wrote: | Amazing animations and incredibly well explained. Best ELI5 of a | mechanical watch EVER | sillysaurusx wrote: | Does anyone know how the author supports themselves? They have a | patreon, but it's not enough to make a living: | https://www.patreon.com/ciechanowski | | The hardest part for me when doing open source work full time was | giving it up and getting a day job. I was fortunate that my wife | was the breadwinner, and that I got to see what it was like to be | a stay at home husband. I've often wished to go back to it. Did | the author figure out a way, or is he wealthy? | | He could also be a Superman, being able to do this with a full | time job or contracting work. | | I spent a few days studying their blog. The work is so good that | when I retire, I'll make a conscious effort to copy their style | as closely as possible. It seems like the optimal way to transmit | knowledge. | | I wish there was an equivalent to YouTube sponsorships for blogs. | If this had a 3 minute preroll ad, they would be rolling in | money. | wlesieutre wrote: | _> I write interactive articles about physics, math, and | engineering. It 's a weekend hobby of mine, so I only end up | making a few articles per year._ | | Superman it is! | erikig wrote: | A cursory search indicates that he's a game developer in the UK | which explains the WebGL chops. | badindentation wrote: | I think that's a different guy because his twitter profile | (from the website) says he lives in California. | moritonal wrote: | They made anywhere from PS470 to (using a rough sharp-tail | model) PS1666 per article. | | Whilst I agree that the amount of time required do this doesn't | professionally cover that, it's a very nice hobby which makes | somewhat real money (very much depending on how many sharp the | tail of PS54's are) and garners some serious traffic whilst | building a very solid credability in the industry. | | Plus I signed up, so now they make PS2.50 more! | stephenanand wrote: | yumraj wrote: | This was fantastic, for the first time in my life I actually | understood what _jewel_ means and what _n_ _jewels_ refers to | when it comes to a mechanical watch. | | If Bartosz is reading this, I'm genuinely curious how much time | did it take him to create this post. It looks like an insane | amount of work with all the knowledge acquisition, write up, | animation and so on.. | overlisted wrote: | This author author is like 3B1B but with engineering | mc4ndr3 wrote: | The canvases occupy so much of the screen (on small phones) that | it is sometimes difficult to scroll the page. Otherwise, amazing | article. | MengerSponge wrote: | This is lovely! While there's a lot of watch content on YouTube, | I'm amazed that no one has called out Clickspring's skeleton | clock build. It's _also_ a masterpiece, just in a different | medium: | | Full build playlist: | https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZioPDnFPNsETq9h35dgQ... | | Direct link to the first episode: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8Y146v8HxE&list=PLZioPDnFPN... | zerop wrote: | Who had invented mechanical watches? | matheusmoreira wrote: | The GPS post blew me away but this one about watch movements is | just so incredible. | natly wrote: | This guy deserves way more patreons than he has: | https://www.patreon.com/ciechanowski | shruggedatlas wrote: | Signed up to HN just to say that I signed up to Patreon to | support him. Thanks for sharing. | JohnBooty wrote: | Well, he just got one more. What an absolute treasure. | slough228 wrote: | two more. | ycombinete wrote: | And my axe | chadash wrote: | three more :) | aenis wrote: | ...and a practical example of a race condition :-) | bush-bby wrote: | Hahaha. | aenis wrote: | Three. And I am sure many more to come. Quality stuff. | [deleted] | andoli wrote: | brilliant work in every aspect, really blew my mind | Razengan wrote: | Is there a "gearpunk" hobbyist community anywhere? Where people | design mostly un-electrical contraptions or even mechanical | computers etc.? Would be a pretty fun and rewarding hands-on | craft. | justAlittleCom wrote: | Mechanical watch nerd here. This describe an ETA (swiss) | movement, I really prefer the Japanese movement (I know mostly | seikos). The mechanism are more simple and more robust. For | instance, on ETA the crown mechanism is really sensitive, a lot | of tiny fragile parts with a lot of tension in them, it go wrong | easily. | | Also, seeing this web page I got frustrated by the fact it | doesn't tackle what got me the hardest time: how can the crown | move the hands without any clutch mechanism (some have) ? It's a | matter of friction and torque, so it's hard to get while | reasoning on a "perfect" mechanism. | elSidCampeador wrote: | Hi where can I learn more about the Japanese movements? | rssoconnor wrote: | It doesn't go into a lot of detail but the article does say: | | > Notice that when we turn the minute wheel only the cannon | pinion turns. That pinion fits tightly inside its driving gear | - it usually turns with that gear. However, when the driving | gear can't rotate because it's blocked by the rest of the gear | train, the cannon pinion can overpower the friction of that | tight fit and rotate on its own. This lets us set time without | interfering with the gear train, which could break the delicate | parts. | | Personally, I was wondering how one can wind the watch from the | crown without engaging the weight of the autowinding mechanism. | I'm guessing that winding with the crown causes the ratchet to | slip on both pairs of blue/yellow gears. | tpl wrote: | Love the diagrams. Great write up! | JohnBooty wrote: | I am absolutely astounded. This is incredible craftsmanship, on | par with mechanical watches themselves. | | This creator is absolutely among the best at his craft. I lack | the words to properly describe my admiration. | lvturner wrote: | For those interested in watch assembly (I'm differentiating | between assembly and watch making), I can highly recommend | https://diywatch.club/ I bought one of their kits and was super | satisfied with it. | | You could do it cheaper by buying random parts off eBay or | Taobao, I did this for a second watch - using the following video | from the "Watch Repair Channel" | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rieKmfaKMCY | | But having your initial attempt somewhat de-risked gave me the | confidence to dive head first into other concepts and ideas. | | I'm not quite ready to do a tear down and service of a movement, | but with a timegrapher on the way... it won't be long before I'll | end up scratching that itch too! | veltas wrote: | Would love something like this for cars. | komposit wrote: | He has one on the combustion engine | xwdv wrote: | Wow, I didn't expect I would read all that but the visualization | was so great and made it easy to follow, I learned more about | mechanical watches than I ever thought I would! | | If every subject could have visualization like this I could learn | anything! | zander312 wrote: | Stunning visuals and interactivity! | herodotus wrote: | Mr Ciechanowski's articles are themselves complete works of art. | Another brilliant article and collection of interactive | animations. | | My favourite escapement is the detent escapment. I saw a cutout | model at the Imperial Science Museum in London. Even after | staring at it for ages I could not figure out how it worked! ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-05-05 23:00 UTC)