I have been wearing a watch since the the time my brain was able to develop storage memory. I am not a doctor and not any scientist so far but I have never had a memory of having a naked wrist aside from taking a bath, sleeping or just lazying it up in the house. And so therefore this thoughts are from the mind of a practical wristwatch user with upscale interest in anything involved in horology in the hopes to help anybody that might need such information. I try to make it as simple as reading time.
For me, there are only two types of watches as I based it from how the watch is regulated to tell time, Which is a mechanical or a quartz watch.
Mechanical watches are mainly composed of gears, screws and springs in its movement or the engine of the WATCH. Mostly these watches are similar in looks to that of a quartz watch but the components inside are still that of century old technologies with improvements over the period of time. These type of watches are less accurate than quartz watches and are more expensive in selling price and maintenance costs. And aside from that, these watches are not grab and go pieces, there is a consistent effort from the owner as to powering the watch, setting the time quite often, sending it to service more often and all other tasks needed to own and use one. Which is why some dubbed as romantic for the owner since mechanicals require or better yet need you to live. Its power source comes from you by winding it or wearing it which is the case of automatics, and the frequent resetting of time due to its inaccuracy effects after a month or so. Which is why this romance is often accepted by watch enthusiasts and collectors like myself. Its like we are wearing a watch that has a personality and dependence to you, which shall I say creates more attachment to your relationship with it. Crazy though but its not sick at least.
Quartz watches on the other hand are quite new if you'd compare it to the mechanicals. The first commercially sold quartz wristwatch was available on December 24, 1969 by Seiko. It was the horological technology that really changed the watch industry and took the norm of majority. It changed how everyone then perceived the watch up to this day. These watches are in majority powered by batteries. Though many advancements have already come for the past decade which came from the technology driven land of Japan. Seiko, the pioneer of the quartz wristwatch has its popular kinetic watch, which generates power from the movement of your wrist stored in a capacitor or rechargeable battery and regulates the watch through a quartz crystal for better accuracy. Citizen, does also have their Eco-Drive which gets power from solar energy or any light for that matter as they say and of course house a quartz crystal too that regulates the watch.
So the next practical question is, which is better? Well of course with everything considered, I'd say its the battery powered quartz watch. Why, because mechanicals are inaccurate, needs maintenance and constant attention and more expensive. Kinetics are accurate, but it still needs more service and maintenance, its a lot costly to replace the capacitor or rechargeable battery and more expensive. Eco-Drives are far better and should come close second to battery operated ones. But, does being better mean that it should be the type of watch that you should buy? In common sense yes, but some of us are crazy like me would not use this as the overall basis. Therefore if we have simply defined the types of watches, we can defined three types of people who wear watches. And these people are defined as to why they wear these timepieces. I call em the 3 F's. Function, Fashion and Fun.
Function are those who use a watch to primarily tell time. It could be military, security, professionals, divers, sportsmen which value the accuracy, durability and usability of a timepiece. Therefore these market should go for quartz time pieces that come at bang for the buck price. A seiko, citizen, casio or a timex would always fit the bill.
Fashion are for those whose primary objective is that these watches are part of their full fashion get-up. They sport whatever is new, and whatever style is in. May it be quartz or mechanical, depends on the purchasing power.
Then there are those for fun. Well not necessarily fun as a joke, but as a passion or a hobby. This is where enthusiasts and WIS (watch idiot savants) belong. They normally purchase a lot of watches over time that are more that what they need. Majority of which get mechanicals and some quartzes depending on the popularity or rarity of the watch.
So I guess i have just pretty summed up what is all about to know about what is it about watches and who wears em. So which are you?
