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The Encyclopedia of Horology

Watch family · Transitional

Electric and Electromechanical Watches

Partially verified

Transitional wristwatches in which a battery replaces the mainspring as the power source, while timekeeping is still regulated by a mechanical balance wheel (electromechanical) or, in later examples, a vibrating tuning fork rather than a quartz crystal, bridging fully mechanical and later quartz watches.

Movement & mechanism

  • Battery supplying current to a coil that impulses a balance wheel electromagnetically, replacing the mainspring and gear-train impulse of a conventional movement, in early electromechanical designs
  • Later transitional designs (tuning-fork watches) replace the balance wheel with an electrically driven tuning fork vibrating at a much higher frequency, geared down mechanically to drive the hands
  • Battery hatch on the case back, a new feature not found on prior mechanical wristwatches

Identification

  • A small battery hatch, distinct from a screw-down case back, on the case back
  • No mainspring winding resistance felt at the crown in true electric designs, though many still allow manual hand-setting
  • A characteristic high-pitched hum audible from tuning-fork designs rather than an audible mechanical tick

Terminology

  • Electromechanical — a movement using a battery to impulse a mechanical balance wheel
  • Tuning-fork watch — a later electric design using an electrically driven tuning fork as the timekeeping element instead of a balance wheel

Known variations

  • Balance-wheel electromechanical watch
  • Tuning-fork electric watch

Pocket-watch ancestry

Electric timekeeping has no meaningful pocket-watch ancestry, since battery power only became practical in a wristwatch-scale case in the late 1950s, decades after pocket watches had ceased to be the dominant everyday timepiece; the category instead sits directly between the mechanical and quartz wristwatch eras.

Collecting notes

Collected as a distinct transitional bridge between mechanical and quartz watchmaking; because batteries of the original type are frequently discontinued, and old cells can leak and damage a movement, safe battery type and case-back seal condition are important practical considerations for collectors of running examples.

Related photographs

Prim mechanical wrist watch disassembled part 1
Prim mechanical wrist watch disassembled part 1 — Kozuch, CC BY-SA 3.0. Wikimedia Commons file page
Prim mechanical wrist watch disassembled part 2
Prim mechanical wrist watch disassembled part 2 — Kozuch, CC BY-SA 3.0. Wikimedia Commons file page
Mechanical wristwatch
Mechanical wristwatch — Petar Milošević, CC BY-SA 3.0. Wikimedia Commons file page

No confidently matched photograph of this subject has been found yet. These photographs show a closely related record, and are not examples of the type described on this page.

Sources & references

  1. General literature on 1950s–1960s electric and tuning-fork watches; individual manufacturer priority claims for the first electric wristwatch are debated and not resolved here.

Where sources disagree, the disagreement is stated rather than resolved silently.