![]() The most-common arrangement of gears in the wheel train meant that a pinion extending from the fourth wheel could drive a seconds hand in a sub-dial with only a little extra work and expense. As noted below, an added benefit of sub-dial seconds was that one could see, at a glance, that the watch was still running, keeping time, so it did not require rewinding. This is one reason for the appearance of the seconds hand on pocket watches in the 19th century. Here’s me, installing a common ETA 6497 hand-wound pocket watch movement with sub-dial seconds at 6:00 ![]() Later, the fourth wheel was integrated with the escape wheel pinion as part of the timekeeping function, so it became trivial to add a sub-dial for seconds. ![]() Watchmakers added a “fourth wheel” to the standard three-wheel movement with a rotation period of one minute, and this drove the seconds hand. Even today, many clocks lack a seconds hand, though most common watches have one.Ī seconds hand wasn’t really practical to implement until the inventions of the pendulum for clocks and spiral balance spring for watches, both in the 17th century. And then they were mainly featured on pocket watches and specialized scientific clocks rather than common clocks. Seconds hands appeared in the 15th century on German clocks and reappeared intermittently for the next few centuries but didn’t become common until the 18th century. This is partly because of the needs of clock buyers and partly because of technology.įirst, the historical facts. Nevertheless, the seconds hands remained somewhat rare until recently. The seconds hand is indeed a later innovation in clocks, but was found as far back as the 15th century. 96, really don’t provide much information but they sure do add to the look of a watch! ![]() Running seconds in a sub-dial, as seen in this classic Patek Philippe Ref. Why do watches have a seconds hand anyway? When were they added? I researched the history and function of the seconds hand and came to some interesting conclusions: They’re a lot older than I had guessed, but didn’t really become common until the 20th century. A recent question on Quora prompted me to ponder the common yet often pointless seconds hand. ![]()
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