I have always been a fan of fine watches. I cannot afford them but I appreciate them.
In some of the finest watches there is a complication called a “tourbillon”.
It was invented long ago and, near as I can gather, it was meant to increase the accuracy of pocket watches which tended to stay in one orientation (call it vertical while in a pocket).
Fast forward to today and I have heard a tourbillon is one of the more useless things in a wrist watch since the orientation of a wristwatch changes a lot but it is put into fine watches because it is neat to look at (aesthetics).
But what I keep missing from all of these “it helps with accuracy” sound bites is why? What is it doing? Why would you want it (aside from it looks cool)?
Actually…seems I need to read more of what is already out there. If anyone want to chime in that’s great (really). I would have deleted this thread but missed the window.
Just having a hard time getting my head around what it is really doing but I’ll get there…maybe.
The entire escapement is rotating in the cage, and so, in principle, any slight differences in timing that might be due to gravity acting on that part of the mechanism are evened out. If your watch is always in the same orientation, or is moving about in orientation so much that it all evens out, there is no value to a tourbillion, since in either case it can be adjusted to keep good time assuming one or the other case. However for a watch that might have a hard to predict set of orientations where one may dominate over the others, actively working to even out the imbalance might be expected to help. It means that no assumption about the pattern of orientations need be made. The flaw is that the tourbillion only rotates in one axis, and so the orientation is only averaged around that axis. In reality it doesn’t keep any better time. But as a triumph of the watchmaker’s skill, it is hard to beat.
Yeah…wearing a watch these days is not about having the most accurate timepiece (which is your phone). It is about aesthetics.
For some, being able to make a mechanical timepiece, by hand, that is very accurate is a measure of the artisanship.
But sure, a $10 Casio digital watch will tell you the time really well too. If you only want a watch to tell you what time it is then the Casio will do a great job.