that whoever designed the self winding or automatic movement (wasn't it Rolex?) ASSUMED that the watch owner would keep the watch strapped to his wrist 24/7 when it was advertised it as "never needing winding".
Yeah, right.
I formerly owned an Invicta "Pro Diver" with an Japanese Miyota automatic movement in it. Since I only wore the watch when I left the house for non-work activities, I found myself having to wind it up fully every morning if I wanted to keep it running constantly. Just giving it a couple of shakes was not enough...automatics, in order to be automatic, need to be worn.
Ordinarily, this morning ritual for a regular automatic watch would only take a few seconds, but, being a professional dive watch, I had to first undo its screw down crown, then wind the watch, and then finally screw down the crown again so the case would be water resistant to the stated depth of 200 meters or about 666 feet.
Aside from worrying that I would wear out the treads on the stem tube and inside the crown, I found it a chore to get the treads to properly engage with each other so that I could screw the crown back into place again. Now that I have replaced that problematic watch with its analog quartz lookalike, I leave the crown screwed in until I need to advance the calendar at the end of a month with less than 31 days in it.
My point is that automatic watches sound good in principle, but tend to fall short of expectations in practice. Interestingly, most of the mechanical watches I see coming out of China nowadays have automatic movements. Why? More PROFIT for the watch "manufacturer" for providing buyers with this supposedly much sought "complication".
technoguy
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