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Thermally Powered Mechanical Wristwatch
Raghu Mani writes "Theremally powered quartz wristwatches - which use minor temperature variations to generate electricity - have been around for a few years. Now here is something a lot more radical - a thermally powered mechanical watch. Invented by an American - Steven Phillips - it uses small temperature variations to wind the mainspring of the watch. A patent has been awarded for this - check out this link. A small article on the technology can be found here and the guy's own website is budapestwatchco.com. I doubt if any of us will be buying one of those watches anytime soon, though - just check out those prices ;-)."
Wow.. When we get back to mechanical computers.
hmm will the body temperature affect it?
This is my
Pfft! You're supposed to tell us about this BEFORE christmas!
Just find a way to joe cell my g-shock and i'll be happy.
Why yes I am paranoid! Thanks for asking!
are there people/against-epatent-zealots who want to abolish patents at all?
Doh.
------ ( Read More... | 666 of 682 comments )
Beowulf cluster of these. I bet you could run the ISS with astronauts from NASA and Russia having sex in turns. How costly is sex in russia?
Clever stuff like this DESERVES patents, not one click shopping and silly little algorythms.
Luckily I live in a country with a sane patent system!
I'm reeling from the thought that a watch can be worth more than my whole house.
Better not forget it in your pants come laundry day...
You can't take the sky from me...
In the patent claim
...more weired English to go...
1. A self winding timepiece which includes a casing, a movement, a main spring for driving said movement and a winding mechanism for said main spring in said casing, an energy source for driving said winding mechanism which comprises an element subject to angular deflection in response to changes in temperature and means coupled to said element for converting angular deflection of said element to motion for driving said winding mechanism.
I cannot understand this claim...
They aren't funny anymore, nor are they imaginative at all. They are simply repetitive and nothing more.
Sunny Dubey
This is a cool gadget. And for those wondering about body temperature.....
The back of a watch embodying the invention is selected to be of a good heat conductive material, which will influence the temperature at the coil. Tests utilizing a thermometer strapped to a wrist, as a watch is, have shown the following temperature variations. When the watch is on the arm for the day, it is subjected to high temperatures due to body heat (on the order of ninety-five degrees). Most watches are worn slightly loose. When the back of the watch is essentially flush on the arm the temperature is up, on the order of ninety degrees F. Due to a slight shift on the arm, the case acts as a heat sink and the temperature drops three to six degrees F. This occurs about every fifteen minutes at room temperatures of seventy-five to seventy eight degrees. In addition there are fluctuations in room temperature due to cycling of the heating or air conditioning thermostats. The changes in temperature at the watch are more frequent and at a wider range when the watch is worn outside. It was found that the temperature at the watch was ninety degrees plus five degrees and minus ten degrees on a day when the outside ambient temperature was fifty degrees, all temperatures being Fahrenheit. When the watch is removed at night and subjected only to ambient room temperature it will very quickly drop to ambient room temperature, usually about seventy degrees. During the night the temperature will cycle with fluctuation in room temperature as the thermostatically controlled heat cycles. When the wearer again puts on the watch in the morning, there will be an increase in temperature of the watch casing back up to the external body temperature of the wearer. Change in temperature in either direction will produce self-winding of a watch embodying the invention.
Truly a perpetual watch!
U.S. watchmaker Steven Phillips patented a power supply for mechanical watches that requires only small changes in temperature to keep the watch in continual operation.
The first of its kind for mechanical watches, the power system is called "Eternal Winding System," and will be placed in several watches made by Phillips at his company, Budapest Watch Co., Guilford, CT.
Under development since early 2000, and granted a worldwide patent late this year, the watch and the power supply join as the first fully mechanical wristwatch that requires neither winding nor wearing to operate.
While several Japanese manufacturers offer watches that use temperature variations to operate quartz (non-mechanical) movements, Phillips says he is the first to develop the technology for a mechanical watch movement.
Similar to a mechanical thermostat, where a metal coil expands and contracts depending on the air temperature, Phillips developed a metallic coil with proprietary components so sensitive they will expand or contract at the slightest temperature variation. The movement of this coil, whether expanding or contracting, is transferred to a mainspring, the heart of a mechanical watch.
"Since there is no stopping the power, this system is well suited for perpetual watches," says Phillips, who makes the watches by hand. Phillips says the first watches using the new technology will premier at the Basel Show 2003, April 3-10. Details are in current issues of International Wristwatch magazine, a U.S.-based watch publication for consumers, www.internationalwristwatch.com. Later this month, details will be available at www.budapestwatch.com.
by Michael Thompson
For comparison, the Pulsar, the first digital watch the on the market, cost $2100. A couple years later digital watches were under $20 from Texas Instruments, and just a couple of years after that TI was out of the watch business because they couldn't compete against $4 imports.
This isn't saying that self-winding watches will take off in the same way; it's just comparing the prices of mass-production stuff versus very low rate production.
I am used to paying top dollar for desirable time pieces, but that guy must be kidding! It seems to me that the watch being in a constant state of winding would lessen the life of the movement, and stress the main spring a lot. Nah, I mean this guy would not just develop this without some long term testing, he surely would not ignore the advice of other master watchmakers who said the movement would be short lived. I mean come on, this could not possibly be a cynical bid to gain some kudos within horological circles prior to the launch of overpriced garbage timepieces. perish the thought.
At those prices, you'd think he could afford a spell checker. I've been reading the site for 5 minutes and already found 3 errors.
Slashdot? Oh, I just read it for the articles.
New watch...new car...new watch...new car....
It works on that basis. That's not so impressive. What IS impressive is that it is mechanical! See the whole thing on patent's page or my comment here.
I can see they are of great quality, ( all the best timepieces ARE mechanical ) and are worth quite a bit ..
....
But 100k??? That is a bit steep, even for this
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Seriosuly, though, that is probably one of the coolest pieces of tech I've seen this year.
Buy a 9$ watch, spend 20000$ on batteries, save yourself 9991$ compared to the prices of their watches.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Technologically the Seiko kinetics are far more impressive and being quartz based movements wil keep better time than any mechanical. In fact a 99cents quartz watch will keep better time than the most expensive mechanical. Seems to me the primary function of a watch is to tell time, and on this front the most expensive watches are beaten by the cheapest piece of crap on the market. Money well spent!
Criminy. They'll give patents for ANYthing these days...
Any sufficiently well-organized Government is indistinguishable from bullshit.
It'd better be able to make me eggs in the morning and pour my wine at night!
If it weren't for all the free software GPL crap, Linux could have been profitable and we'd all still have jobs now.
Linux could have been what MacOS X is today, but since it chose the path of socialism it has been relegated to the dustbin of history. To a large degree I think the FSF, and particularly Richard Stallman, are responsible for the current economic meltdown in information technology.
Don't believe me? Read the GNU manifesto. That asshole clearly has an agenda, and it's not just about computer software.
Energy ain't free. If the watch is powered by temperature fluctuations from your wrist, your wrist is going to get tired faster. For computer users, this could just excaberate any RSI problems the wearer already has.
I just unwrapped a fancy Casio "wave-ceptor" watch that synchronises with atomic clocks by radio this morning ... and now it is obsoleted!!
A man goes to a doctor to get these horrible headaches treated. After examining the man the doctor tells him that the only way to get rid of his headaches is to get his testicles cut off because they are pressing against his spinal chord. Very distraught, the man agrees that anything is better than the headaches.
Four weeks later, after a successful operation and recovery, the man feels physically great, but depressed, so he decides to do something that will make him feel better. He chooses to buy some designer suits that will boost his morale and his image.
He goes downtown to a high dollar men's shop, and as he's looking around, a salesman asks him if he's in the market for a designer suit or two. And the man is surprised, but he nods and the salesman says, I'm sure you'll like this new line we just got. You probably wear size 32"- 29" slacks, jacket size 42 long and shirt size 16 34-35.
The man is dumbfounded, and he asks, how did you know that? The sales man says, I do this for a living, it's my job. Then the salesman says, I can tell that you like blue, and that you have a preference for pinstripes. The man is totally surprised and says, Well yes, that is all absolutely correct! How could you know all that? And the salesman just says, well, it's my job to know, I'm a professional.
So the man tries the suit that the salesman picked, and sure enough it fits like a glove and he loves the color and the fabric. The man says, you are something else! You picked exactly what I wanted and it couldn't fit better!
The salesman then says, how about some shoes? I can tell that you wear a 9 ½ AA shoe, and you prefer black wingtips. The man is just amazed by now. How could you possibly know those things? And the salesman tells him that he's just doing his job. He tries the shoes on and they look and fit great.
The man is feeling very good by now and he says, now all I need is some underwear. So the salesman says, sure, you wear size 32 boxer style underwear, and the man then says, NO! I got you! I've been wearing size 28 brief style underwear for the past 20 years! And the salesman says, well I would really advise you not to do that. You can get some f***ing wicked headaches that way.
Here's a link,
Here's a link,
why don't I just
link the google search page?
Anyone remember memory metals? They were sort of a greeting card fad for a
while..You would mail a loved one what looked like an unbent paper clip, with
instructions to dip it into hot coffee. Upon hitting the hot coffee the metal
would bend itself into a message. Really neat stuff if you ever got to play with
it.
. I never bothered to open it and play with it, but he said it had something to do with the pendulum action of your arms... Still works like a charm today.
For us carnivores, "Sucking the marrow out of life" isn't a transcendentalist philosophy but a practical instruction.
I think you will find most people have goatse.cx in the old hosts.deny file.
Is that too much to ask for saving your environment?
You might want to look up the difference between physics and physiology sometime. And while I may not have a physics degree, I have picked up quite a lot by reading the posts of Slashdot's own PhysicsGenius.
There are already Citizen Eco-Drive solar powered watches and Seiko Kinetic motion-powered watches. Why would there be demand for this?
Rolex...17 years old and still sweeping (Rolex's don't tick).
Automatically winding clocks (using temperature or pressure variations) have been around for hundreds of years. We even have one here in the Auckland War Memorial Museum.
This is a very, very cool device but really what use is it? I have a mechanical watch. I wake up every morning, I wind it and every so often I sync the time to GPS. Not that difficult. And as a self confessed computer geek it is about the only exercise I get!
I like the bits in the patent about the Patek Philippe automatic watch that will run for seven days without being worn. Again very cool but why apart from the fact that very rich people can buy them then go to posh parties and say I haven't worn this watch for 6 days and it is still going! You'd bloody expect so for a watch costing that much money!
I think Slashdot should lay off the rich bastards watch stories until we get laser watches like James Bond has in Never say never again.
Why don't I come up with a wristwatch that winds itself from the swipe of only a Platinum American Express Card in an integrated cardreader. It would bill USD100 every swipe. Would that be exclusive enough for some pretentious prick to show off to his pretentious prick friends? Huh? Would it? Jesus Christ.
G.
This article(From science and computers, a new face of Jesus) on CNN website shows the face of Jesus re-created by scientists. "The Jesus plastered on the cover of this month's Popular Mechanics has a broad peasant's face, dark olive skin, short curly hair and a prominent nose. He would have been 5-foot-1-inch tall and weighed 110 pounds, if the magazine is to be believed...". I am glad that scientists are working hard to bring the real truth to life and dispel the existing myths.
This article(From science and computers, a new face of Jesus) on CNN website shows the face of Jesus re-created by scientists. "The Jesus plastered on the cover of this month's Popular Mechanics has a broad peasant's face, dark olive skin, short curly hair and a prominent nose. He would have been 5-foot-1-inch tall and weighed 110 pounds, if the magazine is to be believed...".
I figure I've never been struck by lightning, broken a bone or won any other contests so my odds of winning the Powerball tonight are pretty good, no? And what the Hell, mechanical watches for the Slashdot crew!
Free as in Beer, cause this rounds on me.
See also Google('atmos clock').
;-), but it is also a temperature powered clock manufactured since the late 1920's (history of the Atmos clock).
Well, it's a little heavier than a wristwatch
Excellent, now we finally can have mechanical power generated from temperature fluctuations. All we need now is some sort of a machine to convert mechanical power into electrical and we have a new type of energy generator... hmmmm ... but where to get such a machine?!
You can't handle the truth.
While these custom watches are, the idea and principals themself are not. Nor is this a new fad or anything else, I still have a mechanical watch from 1955, that requires no winding.
Funny enough, it's a Timex. It was my grandfathers, and I still wear it. After 20 years in the foundry of grit, grime, grunge, and other assorted toxic chemicals, it still works as good as the day he bought it.
I won't be surpised if this is moderated as redundant. If you feel it is, reply. It's easy to moderate, wiser to reply with something witty or intellegent.
--
Be a smart poster, always check "No Score +1 Bonus"
Om, nomnomnom...
I sure hope the time won't start going faster when my wrist warms up from jackin off! ;) ;)
... you would automatically help the investigators by telling them when exactly have you died....
This device is able to use human body heat to create enough usable energy to drive a fairly simple mechanical device.
Let's extend this, playing futurist a bit. The same technology is applied to all the interior surfaces of your clothes, meaning that all your radiated body heat is put to use. Now, your wearable technologies need either smaller batteries, since they are trickle charged all day long by your body heat. Maybe your clothes have an air conditioner built in driven by body heat, maybe you just power a flat panel PDA on your wrist.
I'd keep an eye on this type of technology...reclaiming wasted energy could have huge implications for portable technologies of all kinds.
My Karma is so good, I'm the Dalai Lama...or something.
If you're into mechanical watches, check out www.timezone.com. It's a website for watch geeks with an active message board.
The Steven Phillips watches built here look awfully impressive. Too bad about the style, particularly the enamelling. There's a reason perlage is the standard movement decoration.
Do people still wear watches? With all of the devices that surround us every day that give the time and date, I'm surprised that watches are are sold and used any more.
Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
Self-winding mechanical wristwatches have been around for decades. Granted, you have to wear it in order for them to wind themselves, but if you're going to pay $100,000 for a watch, you probably won't have more than one of them. (Well, although if you have $100,000 to spend on a wristwatch, you probably have $1,000,000 to spend on ten.)
Where the wind blows, the tumbleweed goes.
stirling engine anyone?
theres a much cheaper way to tell time... simply ask a stranger. wow, i think i just saved each and every one of you 100,000.
He lives in the US but he is hungarian + most US ppl have no idea where Budapest is... [ look at the name of his company]
They are just trying to get us fired up about so that when they start selling next month on thinkgeek they will make a load of money.
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,
There is a much more detailed write-up on this in International Wrist Watch magazine (they have a website but the article is not there). Imagine an automatic wristwatch that does not even have to be wound but stays running all the time!
What's more, a "side-effect" of this is that the watch has become vastly more accurate. The rate at which mechanical watches run is dependent on the tension in the mainspring - and since that isn't constant (even in regularly worn automatic watches) mechanical watches (even the most accurate ones) tend to lose or gain a few seconds a day.
The "eternal winding" mechanism somehow manages to keep the tension in the mainspring fairly constant - so the watch's rate varies a lot less and it ends up being about as accurate as a quartz watch!
The ridiculous price is only because these are a limited edition set of watches made by the inventor. According to the article, he intends to sell his patent to a bug watch manufacturer. If Rolex or Omega, for instance, gets hold of it, they will probably incorporate these in their regular watches and the price will, in time, come down to the same as regular Rolex/Omega prices (which aren't exactly cheap but not this expensive either).
- HCE
Drop US$3k on a stainless steel Rolex. They're perfect. Newtonian. As obsolete the day you buy it as your computer was.
:)
It's also one of the few possessions your grandkids are going to fight over when your dead.
I can think of some other applications for this device. For instance, aboard satellites and space probes -- many planets experience extreme fluctuations in temperature during their days (assuming this is a planet with a usable day length), and satellites will experience temperature fluctations as they pass in and out of earth's shadow.
While these are basically the sort of things we us solar panels for now, this has the potential to be more robust and compact -- or maybe not, but they would still have certain advantages. For instance, on Mars, solar panels may suffer from dust deposition, while this wouldn't. They also wouldn't suffer as much from the effects of radiation exposure. On the other hand, I don't know how well it would scale up.
There might be some terrestrial applications, too. For instance, for research you might want to power a sensor (temperature, wind speed, etc) in some remote location. Solar works fine when you're out in the open, but something like this could work in the middle of a shady forest, too.
That is so cool! Uh, wait!
No, no it's so hot, uh, cool...wait!
*ducks*
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
it takes a lickin...?
It's the innovative power supply and it's potential uses, silly.
Why, this is close to a perpetual motion machine (and temperature variations abound)....
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
I can't believe how many here don't understand the significance..
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
Why is it Bullshit again? BECAUSE THIS GUY RIPPED OFF ANOTHER INVENTOR, THAT'S WHY.
Now, have I got your attention?
Good.
See, the problem is that the "perpetual-winding" concept for this watch is not new. Indeed, it's quite old. J.L. Reuter produced a clock that used the exact same mechanism - temperature-change winding power in 1928. It was called the Atmos and is still sold today. Let me repeat this: THIS TECHNOLOGY WAS FIRST USED NEARLY 80 YEARS AGO, BEFORE THIS SO-CALLED "INNOVATIVE WATCHMAKER" WAS EVEN BORN. Again, sorry for the shouting, but this fact really has to be made quite clear.
Basicly, all this guy did was to miniaturize the mechanism and place it one a fancy wristwatch. That particular idea was his - but as for the themal mechanism itself, which both the patent and the website tout so grandly - isn't.
Can someone say "pattent infringement"?
I surely can.
But hey, don't take my word for it:
http://www.oldfathertime.net/atmos/atmos.html
or simply look up "Atmos" on your favorite search engine.
ZZZ Online also had a nice bit on the Atmos a couple of weeks ago.
Really, I can't wait until some busts this guy's ass. His watches are nice, don't get me wrong - but the patent simply isn't his, and so he's effectively stealing from another more deserving person and his benefactors.
Hence, my trusty kinetic watch is effectively equivalent but a lot more affordable.
The price should depend on the quality/uniqueness of the product. This is somewhat of a unique way of keeping time.
I personally believe that if the quality is high enough a price as high as $10 000 should not be considered out of question. My father owns a Rolex self-winding watch.
The watch picks up the vibrations of the moving wrist to wind its gears.
I have seen temperture winding clocks from back in the 1960 - 1970 time frame. This has prior art.
This has prior art.
Indeed. My neighbour has a mechanical clock that winds due to temperature changes, and he he has had it for a long damn time.
That would probably be more like a Mechanical Engineering grad, and less like, say for instance, a pupil to a mentor/reknowned expert. Invention doesn't require genius. In many cases it merely requires being the first person to identify a problem and propose a workable solution.
/. guys will power it by friction. ;)
no more asking me what time it is to get my attention
This was done YEARS ago , starting in the 20's
A french clock called the Atmos uses atmoshperics variations to do this BUT the same company also built one based on temperature, for a clock not such a good idea since youre hope is that a room will remain the same, barometric pressure is another way, the clocks are still made, (i have one from the 30's) neat as heck, check em out on ebay search for Atmos, They are so precise and handbuilt the wattage conversion to run a clock for a year equates to what energy is required to drive a 60 watt bulb for 10 minutes. Pretty swee,
WARNING: this is no Joke (Do not EVER turn an Atmos clock upside down, without parking the movement it will damage the clock (my favorite part is ther is a decal on the BOTTOM of the clock that says this) so if youre reading it its already too late.....
If it is the human body, doesn't it sounds like The Matrix's Duracell-human battery analogy :^) ? We could attach a gigantic watch into a cow and we'd have energy for a small house!!!!
If you stopped eating for long enough, I bet that the watch would stop also...
*whup* "Get along, little electrons. Heeyah!"
Clocks, perhaps...but watches? Given the difficulties often encountered when trying to scale mechanical systems down to smaller sizes, I doubt that claiming a thermally-powered clock as prior art WRT a patent on a thermally-powered watch would fly.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
What they said:
What they meant:
"You will be fortunate if you can get him to work for you."
(We certainly never succeeded.)
There is no other employee with whom I can adequately compare him.
(Well, our rats aren't really employees...)
"Success will never spoil him."
(Well, at least not MUCH more.)
"One usually comes away from him with a good feeling."
(And such a sigh of relief.)
"His dissertation is the sort of work you don't expect to see these days;
in it he has definitely demonstrated his complete capabilities."
(And his IQ, as well.)
"He should go far."
(The farther the better.)
"He will take full advantage of his staff."
(He even has one of them mowing his lawn after work.)
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...