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 ;-)."

Comments

Re:A good patent

[Hal-9001]

The mechanism behind a thermal self-winding mechanical watch and a thermally-powered electrical watch are probably quite different. From skimming the patent, it seems that the thermal self-winding mechanical movement uses the thermal winding of a bimetallic spring to wind the mechanical movement of this watch (sort of like how a bimetallic spring is used to regulate a mercury switch in many thermostats). A thermally-powered electrical watch probably uses the voltage generated across a bimetallic junction to drive the quartz oscillator (which is more akin to a Peltier cooler run in reverse). I agree that, while the idea is clever, it does not deserve patent protection for the next twenty years. On the other hand, the market for this type of invention is pretty small, and other watch makers are free to continue manufacturing other types of self-powered movements (self-winding, kinetic generators, thermoelectric, etc.), so granting the patent does not especially harm the market.