Let’s get Clock Wise – Interesting Facts

Fact 1: The sundial is the only timepiece with the least parts


Fact 2: Before the year 1850, the number 4 was printed as IIII on watch dials instead of IV.

Fact 2: Louis Cartier invented the wristwatch in 1904

Fact 3: The first person to patent a watch winder was Mr. Thomas Wuntch of Dallas, Texas on Sept. 20th 1977.

Fact 4: Scatola first started to market their watch winders in 1990.

Fact 5: The largest number of watch winder manufacturers can be found in China.

Fact 6: Wolf Designs build watch winders in their facility in China.

Fact 7: Buben & Zorweg winders are powered by Elma Motion.

Fact 8: Watches that need bi-directional winding requires rotating either CW or CCW direction.
Most people get the wrong idea that watches that need bi-directional winding must turn one way then the other way in order to properly wind the watch.

Fact 9: When you place a watch in a winder set to CW, the watch is actually winding CCW as the rotor stays at a 6 o’clock position, due to gravity, and goes against the turn of the winder.

Fact 10: The TPD mentioned in every watch winder are approximates and not exact turns. This is because of many variables including voltage applied, motor gear deficiency and the different weight of watches (load) resulting in lower number of turns.

Fact 11: All Brush-motors have a shorter life-span than Brushless ones. Cheaper winders use brush-motors to lower cost.

Fact 12: Genuine Swiss-made motors are expensive.

Fact 13: Germans are famed for their precision engineering.

Fact 14: All winders use motor speed reduction in the form of pulleys and gearboxes. Pulleys reduces speed but gearboxes reduces speed and also increases torque to drive the rotating tables.

Fact 15: Only automatic watches can be wound on a winder; manually wound mechanical watches can’t.

Fact 16: All newer automatics manufactured after 1985 can never be over-wound because of a specially fitted slip-clutch.


Fact 17: All watch winders use a microprocessor to control its TPD and Direction functions.

Fact 18: Watches are best wound at an inclined angle in a watch winder, never horizontal.

Fact 19: In a “Turn and Rest” sequence, the Rest period is use to “stretch time” such that the total time will equal the turns required by the watch to keep wound.

Fact 20: The operational life of a watch winder greatly depends on the motor’s life-span.

Fact 21: Omega watches generally need 1200 turns to be fully wound.

All facts are from a websearch and are true at the time of publishing this post.

Labels: watch fun facts