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Mainspring   The mainspring, located in the spring barrel, stores energy when tensioned and passes it on to the escapement via the gear train as the tension relaxes. Today, mainsprings are generally made of Nivaflex, an alloy invented by Swiss engineer Max Straumann at the beginning of the 1950s. This alloy basically comprises iron, nickel, chrome, cobalt, and beryllium.     Manufacture   Modern definitions of this word are not clear-cut, but most experts agree that the term should be used for a company that manufactures at least one caliber, or extremely important parts of it such as the base plate, on premises. While ten years ago this constituted only a handful of companies in Switzerland and Germany, today's competitive market has forced a number of other creative souls to invest in developing their own movements. ETA, pictured, is without a doubt the largest manufacture in Switzerland. The word itself is derived from Latin (though horologists prefer to use the French variation) and means «made by hand».     Minute repeater   A striking mechanism with hammers and gongs for acoustically signaling the hours, quarter hours, and minutes elapsed since noon or midnight. The wearer pushes a slide, which winds the spring. Normally a repeater uses two different gongs to signal hours (low tone), quarter hours (high and low tones in succession), and minutes (high tone). Some watches have three gongs, called a carillon. The Chronoswiss Répétition à Quarts is a prominent repeating introduction of recent years.     Perlage   Surface decoration comprising an even pattern of partially overlapping dots, applied with a quickly rotating plastic or wooden peg. Also called circular graining, this embellishment had the original use of preventing dust and dirt from gathering on the movement's plates. Today it is mainly a traditional type of decoration. Here it is found on the plates of Frédérique Constant's manufacture Caliber FC 910-1.     Perpetual calendar   The calendar module for this type of timepiece automatically makes allowances for the different lengths of each month as well as leap years until the next secular year (in 2100). A perpetual calendar also usually shows the date, month, and four-year cycle, and may show the day of the week and moon phase as well, as does this one introduced by George J von Burg at Baselworld 2005.     Plate   A metal platform having several tiers for the gear train. The base plate of a movement usually incorporates the dial and carries the bearings for the primary pinions of the «first floor» of a gear train. The gear wheels are made complete by tightly fitting screwed-in bridges and bars on the back side of the plate. A specialty of the so-called Glashütte school, as opposed to the Swiss school, is the reverse completion of a movement not via different bridges and bars, but rather with a three-quarter plate. Glashütte Original's Caliber 65 (shown) displays a beautifully decorated three-quarter plate.     Power reserve display   A mechanical watch contains only a certain amount of power reserve. A fully wound modern automatic watch usually possesses between 36 and 42 hours of energy before it needs to be wound again. The power reserve display keeps the wearer informed about how much energy his or her watch still has in reserve, a function that is especially practical on manually wound watches with several days of possible reserve. The Nomos Tangente Power Reserve pictured here represents an especially creative way to illustrate the state of the mainspring's tension. On some German watches the power reserve is also displayed with the words «auf» and «ab».     Pulsometer   A scale on the dial, flange, or bezel that, in conjunction with the second hand, may be used to measure a pulse rate. A pulsometer is always marked with a reference number – if it is marked with gradué pour 15 pulsations, for example, then the wearer counts fifteen pulse beats. At the last beat, the second hand will show what the pulse rate is in beats per minute on the pulsometer scale. The scale on Sinn's World Time Chronograph (shown) is marked simply with the German world Puls (pulse), but the function remains the same.

Courtesy of Wristwatch Annual 2006 © Abbeville Press  A - B   C - F   G - L   M – P   Q - S   T - W