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Old pocket watch12/27/2023 ![]() ![]() Pocket watches were widely considered luxury items until the middle of the 19 th century, when American-made pocket watches started to be mass-produced. This improvement made watches much more accurate than Henlein’s early devices and would pave the way for centuries of watchmakers to add improvements of their own. Along with a barrel, the fusee helped to house the mainspring and progressively increase its leverage as it ran down. Around 1525, Zech developed a cone-shaped pulley known as a fusee. The problem with mainspring tension would later be studied by Jacob Zech, a Swiss mechanic living in Prague. The tension in the mainspring was greater when fully wound than when it was almost run down, making the clock run faster when wound and slower as time went on.Moving the device would impair their ability to keep accurate time (so much for portability).Henlein’s little clocks originally featured only an hour hand, unlike today’s watches, some of which are able to tell time to the millisecond.While fascinating and desirable, these first watches were unreliable and inaccurate due to a number of reasons: These tiny clocks were designed to be carried by hand, and were circular or oval in shape, and were originally called “Nuremberg eggs”-partly due to their shape and partly due to a mistranslation of the German word “Ueurlein” (little clocks) for “Eierlein” (little eggs). Locksmith Peter Henlein crafted the first spring-driven clocks, and is credited with inventing the portable timepiece (or watch, as we know it today). Up until then, clockmakers had relied on swinging weights in order to power the inner mechanisms of their clocks-but with the invention of the mainspring, they were able to make small portable timepieces. Pocket watches have been around since the late 1400s when technological advancements in mechanical engineering made it possible to miniaturize clocks. ![]() Read on for the reasons why you should-nay, must-own an antique pocket watch. If you’re wondering whether a pocket watch is right for you, or just looking for someone to assure you that it’s okay to carry one, we’re here to help. Why should someone carry around a watch in their pocket when modern watches are so convenient-riding our wrists and enabling us to check the time at a moment’s notice? There are many reasons why people these days are opting for pocket watches, and you don’t need to live in the 19 th century to understand the benefits of these portable time-keeping devices. For today’s watch enthusiast who longs for those simple days of yore, the answer to our troubles-and our timekeeping needs-is the pocket watch. But while countless people reach toward the future, many of us harken back to the past, when life was simpler and days were less hectic.
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