Watch features: Self-winding

For today self-winding is one of the most widespread watch features. It seems that the habit of everyday manual winding became a thing of the past a long time ago. A Swiss watchmaker, Abraham Louis Perrelet, is a man who created the self-winding system.

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Since the early 1770s, he began to bring to the market pocket watches, which didn’t need regular winding. The pattern was mainly the same that we have today: a metal sector moving at each watch movement is attached to the axis in the case center. In fact, its movement winds the mainspring. Before Perrelet created a restrictive mechanism, a lot of springs simply broke due to continuous winding. Being a complex and capricious mechanism, self-winding didn’t gain popularity among pocket watches.

The idea found its second wind in 1931, when Rolex managed to fit the mechanism with a rotor into wrist case. Keeping in mind technologies available at that time, it resulted in a notable increase in case thickness. So called Rolex Bubbleback appeared. When Sir Edmund Hillary became the first man in the history of mankind who conquered Everest in 1953, it is this watch, which was on his wrist.  

The large scale entry of automatic watches also began at that time. Today the self-winding unit has no significant impact on the movement thickness. And keeping in mind the popularity of big cases – there’s no need in space saving.