It seems absurd to think that you have to wind your watch to maintain the correct time in today's world. But the truth is, people have had to wind watches for hundreds upon hundreds of years. The self-winding or automatic watch was invented in 1770. This innovation revolutionized how people track time around the globe and defined modern watch-making Plein uhr.
Abraham-Louis Perrelet, a Swiss watchmaker, invented the automatic watch in 1770. Perrelet created a pocket watch with self-winding mechanisms using the same principles as modern pedometers in that year. The watch's mechanism automatically wound when the wearer walks. It moved up and down as the wearer walked Buying an Automatic Men's Watch - Useful Information and Tips. The Geneva Society of Arts reported in 2005 that the Perrelet invention enabled the watch to be wound sufficiently fast for eight days of time-keeping, requiring only fifteen minutes of walking. The automatic watch was born Philipp Plein uhr.
Abraham-Louis Breguet, a fellow watchmaker, eventually purchased some of Perrelet's watch designs. Breguet would make some modifications to the design but it was eventually unreliable. He stopped making his own designs. When the wristwatches were made with the same design, the automatic mechanism conversion really took off. Pocket watches required that the watch owner actually move the watch around, but wristwatches with an automatic mechanism could wind when the user moved their arm up or down. Automatic winding was possible for almost all movements. John Harwood was the first to apply the automatic concept of the wristwatch. Harwood obtained patents for mechanisms that were later called "hammers" and "bumpers". Although this mechanism could only be wound when the watch was turned in one direction it allowed for autonomous watch functionality for 12 hours when fully wound. This was the first commercially viable automatic watch.