Thermally Powered Mechanical Wristwatch

Posted by michael on Wednesday December 25, 2002 @07:03AM from the crack-open-the-piggy-bank dept.

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 ;-)."

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Prices aren't so out of line by shoppa · 2002-12-25 07:21 · Score: 5, Insightful

The prices asked (a few $10000) aren't too far out of line for what is essentially a custom-built watch. I don't think that the self-winding technology is setting the price, just the low production quantities.
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.