Feature: 5 Things You Didn't Know A Watch Could Do

In an era of smart technology where your car can drive itself and the TV tells you what to watch, a basic wristwatch can seem a little … stupid. They can tell the time where you are or somewhere else, or, at a push record an isolated period of time of your choosing. Hardly what you’d call smart, or even above average. Watchmaking, however, may be an old technology, but nevertheless luxury watches still have a few tricks up their sleeves. Take a look.

Tell You Which Way You’re Facing

Have you ever watched one of those “lost in the woods” horror films and you’ve thought to yourself, “If I were in that situation, there’s no way I’d get lost.” Chances are you too would get just as lost, because for one reason or another that no one quite understands, humans really struggle to walk in a straight line. Lose a focal point in the distance and we go round in circles like we’re all mad drunk.

So how can you make sure to safely plot your escape and avoid whatever evil might otherwise await your sorry backside? Well, if you have an analogue watch—that is, one with hands—you might just be alright. All you have to do is point the hour hand at the sun and bisect the shortest distance between it and twelve o’clock, and that’s your South. That’s for the Northern Hemisphere—if you’re South of the equator, simply point twelve o’clock at the sun and bisect to the hour hand instead.

If you so happen to have a watch with a compass bezel, you can even align South to that bisection point and use it to figure out a more specific direction you want to travel in. Just make sure to check periodically and you’ll be well on your way to freedom. And although the method isn’t perfectly accurate, it should at least stop you turning tail and doing an involuntary 180. Not this time, wicked witch, not this time …

Tell You When You’re Sick

I don’t know about you, but something I’ve been concerned about recently is getting ill. Sickness, fever, chills, whatever—I count my blessings every day I don’t have to suffer those symptoms. But feeling ill is rarely the first sign of oncoming unwellness. Sometimes, a good marker is an elevated heart rate. That’s all very well and good, but how on Earth are you supposed to measure that?

An Apple Watch and all its wizardry can very cleverly not only measure your heart rate, but also call the emergency services if it goes out of healthy range and into the danger zone. But what if you just have a plain old mechanical chronograph instead? Well, as along as that chronograph has a pulsometer printed on it, you’ll be alright. Well, you might not be alright, but you’ll at least be able to measure your heart rate and find out.

So how is it done? Start the chronograph, count—as is indicated in this case—fifteen pulses, then stop the chronograph. The chronograph hand will point to the number corresponding to the heart rate in BPM or beats per minute. Okay, so you could just use a normal watch’s second hand and count how many beats there are over a minute, but at least this way saves some precious time counting.

Obviously, I’m not a doctor so consult with a medical professional for advice if you do feel unwell rather than taking advice from a pair of floating hands.

Tell you How Far Away Things Are

If you thought that was pretty neat, then wait and see what we’ve got in store for you next. Whilst I don’t fully understand how the pulsometer scale works to convert 15 pulses into beats per minute, it feels like something that, with a little bit of concentration, I could probably get to grips with. The result is the same as what’s being measured, only for a longer period of time. Or something. I don’t know. I know what I mean.

So how about this to up the ante: using a chronograph not just to measure time, but distance. We’ve seen how a chronograph, alongside a tachymeter, can measure speed—a scale of intervals per unit, like miles per hour, measured over a single unit, like a mile—but the telemeter takes it to a whole new level by being able to tell you how far something is away from you.

Alright, so you won’t be able to use it to see if your new couch will fit, because the rules are quite specific. Whatever it is you want to gauge the distance of has to simultaneously emit light and sound. Use the chronograph to measure the time between both, and the telemeter scale will read the distance.

A very specific set of circumstances, but one you might inadvertently be familiar with. Thunder and lightning, perhaps. The slower speed of sound means that the further the storm is away, the bigger the gap between the two. So, in what specific circumstance is this useful? In warfare, the time between the flash and the bang of an enemy cannon reveals the exact distance with which to return a volley.

Know When It’s Hot And Cold

One of the biggest problems with mechanical movements is making them adaptable to the environment around them. Be it shock, position or temperature, watchmakers have done their very best to counter for all of them, usually by assessing the likelihood of all scenarios and their probabilities, and adjusting for a performance that will average out. It’s a rather passive way of dealing with the problem, and to this day continues to inhibit the technology.

But what about quartz watches? With the first appearing in the late 1960s, it would seem that this extremely accurate method of measuring time would have meant the death knell for the need to compensate for external factors like temperature—but that was just not that case.

A quartz movement, which samples the rate of vibration of a quartz crystal when a current passes through it, can be affected by temperature. Massively so in fact, speeding up or slowing down the vibrations in the crystal enough to throw the accuracy out from 10 seconds a year to 10 seconds a month.

So, what’s to be done about it? Well, in 1967, under a program arranged by a number of Swiss watchmakers to combat the threat of quartz technology arriving from overseas, one Jean Hermann developed a capacitor-controlled module that could measure temperature and adjust for the deviation in the crystal’s vibration accordingly—thus inventing thermo-compensated quartz, or rather a watch that knows exactly how hot or cold it is.

Breathe In And Out Again

As human beings, whether we notice it or not, one of our favourite things to do is breathe. From a light pattern of rhythmic inhalation and exhalation, or a big, satisfying sigh, it’s a pastime we can all get on board with. But sometimes breathing can be deadly.

For deep sea divers, the pressure of the enormous weight of water above means that the pressure of the air breathed in also needs to increase to balance it, otherwise it wouldn’t come out of the tank. Air contains nitrogen, which at such extreme pressures can dissolve into the blood and tissue. Reduce the pressure too quickly and the nitrogen rapidly forms bubbles—just like carbon dioxide does in a bottle of fizzy drink when it’s opened. This, obviously, is not good, and so decompression stops are used to slowly allow the nitrogen to escape harmlessly.

But humans aren’t the only victims of this cruel twist of physics. For the deepest dives, divers remain in a pressurised chamber for up to a month, breathing in an air that swaps the nitrogen for helium. That’s because, at high pressures, nitrogen in the body can cause a similar effect to drunkenness. With one problem fixed, however, another comes to light.

Helium molecules are smaller than oxygen or nitrogen, which, like a thinner guitar string having a higher pitch, is why breathing in helium makes your voice squeaky. Conversations on a saturation dive must be an absolute riot. This is also means these molecules can slip past a watch’s seals, filling it completely. And so, when decompression occurs and the gas expands, it escapes the easiest way it can—by popping off the crystal.

This is why dive watches intended for this type of saturation diving have a helium-escape valve, an entirely automated pressure relieving system that acts as a release for the built-up helium. So, when you go down, the watch breathes in, and when you come back up, it breathes out again.

For all its benefits, the advent of digital computing took some of the fun from developing out-of-the-box solutions to difficult problems. From measuring distance using light and sound to building a watch that can breathe, mechanical, logical solutions are some of the most satisfying not just to discover but to learn about as well. Do you know some great things about watches other people don’t know?

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