The watch that winds itself

For most of its life the wristwatch needed a hand to keep it going. Every morning, a few turns of the crown. Forget, and by evening the hands had stopped.

A weight that moves with you

The idea behind an automatic watch is simple: put a weight inside that swings as the wrist moves, and let it wind the mainspring. Pocket watchmakers tried versions of this in the eighteenth century, but a pocket watch spends its day still, in a waistcoat. It was the wristwatch, moving all day with the arm, that made the idea practical.

In the 1920s a British watch repairer, John Harwood, patented a self-winding wristwatch with a weight that swung through part of a circle and bumped against springs at each end. Later designs let the weight, now called the rotor, turn a full 360 degrees. That is the shape most automatic watches still use.

What it means on the wrist

• No daily ritual. Worn every day, the watch keeps itself wound.
• A power reserve. Take it off on Friday evening and it will usually still be running on Saturday afternoon.
• A sweeping seconds hand. Several small steps a second, rather than one tick, so the hand seems to glide.

Why we still build them

A quartz watch keeps better time and costs less. That has been true for fifty years. People choose an automatic for a different reason: there's a small machine inside, working because you are moving. It asks for a service every few years and a little patience in return.

That is the kind of watch the Atelier Line is made of.