Watchmaking

Watchmaking is the craft of designing, assembling, adjusting, and repairing watches and their mechanisms. It combines precision engineering with skilled handwork.

Mechanical watch: A watch that measures time using a spring-driven mechanical movement. Its gears, springs, and escapement are the central objects of traditional watchmaking.
Horology: The study and measurement of time, including the design and history of timekeeping instruments. Watchmaking is horology's hands-on craft.
Peter Henlein: A German locksmith and clockmaker associated with early portable spring-driven timepieces in the sixteenth century. His work is often linked to the emergence of portable watchmaking.
Watch repair: The diagnosis, servicing, and restoration of watches and their components. Repair is a core practical branch of watchmaking.
Abraham-Louis Breguet: An eighteenth- and nineteenth-century watchmaker known for influential innovations in precision timekeeping and watch design. His inventions and workshop practices became enduring reference points for the craft.
Watch escapement: A mechanism that releases a clock's stored energy in controlled increments while sustaining oscillation. Its precise action regulates a mechanical watch's rate.
Watchmaker's lathe: A small precision lathe used to turn and finish tiny parts for watches and clocks. It lets watchmakers shape components too small for ordinary workshop machinery.
Watchmaking in Geneva: The development of watch production and trade in Geneva, a major center of Swiss horology. Geneva's workshops and institutions shaped the craft's international reputation.
Watch assembly: The fitting and integration of components to create a functioning watch. Assembly brings separately made parts into a working timepiece.
John Harrison: An English clockmaker whose marine chronometers enabled more accurate determination of longitude at sea. His precision timekeepers show watchmaking's role in navigation.

Linked from 6 pages