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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 ;-)."
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!
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...
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 $4 imports.
This isn't saying that self-winding watches will take off in the same way; it's just comparing the prices of mass-production stuff versus very low rate production.
No, patents are important. But I think the system needs some changes. At the moment patents are very easy to get. In austraila someone managed to patent the wheel a few years back. They patented it as the "circular transportation facilitation device". In the US an anti-patent person noticed their child using a swing sideways and applied for a patent on sideways swinging. They got it. The ausie patent was done on a fast-track application, but the US swing was a normal patent subject to the same scrutiny as any other (ie zero). Other famous patents are IBMs famous patent for a computerised airplane toilet queueing system and Microsofts patent on the ASF format, which they used to bully Virtualdub because it could transcode ASF.
At those prices, you'd think he could afford a spell checker. I've been reading the site for 5 minutes and already found 3 errors.
Slashdot? Oh, I just read it for the articles.
Loophole spoted. This only covers energy sources which are subject to angular deflection. Use something like a smaller version of the temperature-compensated pendulum and you get liner deflection not covered by the patent. You can convert that o angular using a rack-and-gear if you need angular to drive the mechanism.
It works on that basis. That's not so impressive. What IS impressive is that it is mechanical! See the whole thing on patent's page or my comment here.
I can see they are of great quality, ( all the best timepieces ARE mechanical ) and are worth quite a bit ..
....
But 100k??? That is a bit steep, even for this
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Seriosuly, though, that is probably one of the coolest pieces of tech I've seen this year.
Buy a 9$ watch, spend 20000$ on batteries, save yourself 9991$ compared to the prices of their watches.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Agreed. Is it just me or is Slashdot losing focus?
There are plenty other (better) resources out there for general news, information and popular mechanics. I come here for news about software, hardware, networking, open source, and internet, as well as a limited selection of other technical stuff.
Having said that it is Christmas Day and maybe I should just turn this machine off ;)
Criminy. They'll give patents for ANYthing these days...
Any sufficiently well-organized Government is indistinguishable from bullshit.
I just unwrapped a fancy Casio "wave-ceptor" watch that synchronises with atomic clocks by radio this morning ... and now it is obsoleted!!
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.
holiday = slow news day
plus this is still kinda cool
man
No manual entry for
Rolex...17 years old and still sweeping (Rolex's don't tick).
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...
... 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.
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
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'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!
Hence, my trusty kinetic watch is effectively equivalent but a lot more affordable.
I have seen temperture winding clocks from back in the 1960 - 1970 time frame. This has prior art.
/. guys will power it by friction. ;)
no more asking me what time it is to get my attention
Mind telling me how one can put an Atmos on one's wrist? As you say, the Atmos has been around 80 years. Did it occur to you that there is a reason why in all that time, no one made a wristwatch based on similar principles.
The fact is that they cannot. The atmos has a chamber filled with gas - the expansion and contraction of which winds the mainspring. There is no way such a chamber could be made small enough to fit inside a wristwatch.
This patent uses a completely different mechanism to achieve the same effect. He did not "miniaturize" the atmos technology. Even if he did, it would be a remarkable achievement - a small-time watchmaker being able to do what one of the world's premier mechanical watch companies could not do for 80 years.
- HCE
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.)
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