How many steps in a second?

[NDA]

Just musing, in a moment of boredom, how many steps in a second? I slow motion video'd one of my watches and was surprised to see 8 steps in a second.

I doubt anyone would be particularly swayed into buying a watch based on this - but it is kind of interesting. Well, to me.

[Doofus]

NDA said:

Just musing, in a moment of boredom, how many steps in a second? I slow motion video'd one of my watches and was surprised to see 8 steps in a second.

I doubt anyone would be particularly swayed into buying a watch based on this - but it is kind of interesting. Well, to me.

28,800bph. Pretty standard, I'd say.

[OMITN]

NDA said:

I doubt anyone would be particularly swayed into buying a watch based on this - but it is kind of interesting. Well, to me.

Spring Drive on my wrist today....

[NDA]

Yup, standard... but was wondering how far this could be pushed. I guess it goes back to quartz for very high oscillations.

[Doofus]

I think Chopard did a 57,600BPH movement. 16 beats per second.

[hkz286]

not mechanical but Interesting none the less,

the omega megaquartz 2400 beat at 2,359,296 times a second.

accurate to one second a month (in 1974 no less), course the battery only lasted 8 months because of the high beat rate lol

[lostkiwi]

Bulova are the highest with their precisionist (262 kHz) movement.

[NDA]

OMITN said:

Spring Drive on my wrist today....

An ingenious watch - I haven't seen one yet, but it's fascinating tech. A kind of hybrid power plant.

[clockworks]

Zenith el Primero is 36,000bph (10 per second).
Quite a few cheaper movements are 21,600bph (6 per second) - Seiko 7s26 for example

28,8000bph (8 per second) is pretty much the norm - ETA 2824, etc.

[mikeveal]

lostkiwi said:

Bulova are the highest with their precisionist (262 kHz) movement.

That depends on what you're measuring. Are we talking about the time between steps of the second hand? Or are we talking about the frequency of the internal oscillator, the size of the chunk of time that the watch counts?

The Precisionist does have a 262KHz oscillator. So it measures time in chunks of 3.8 microseconds. A standard quartz crystal watch runs at 32.768KHz (a period of 30.5microseconds). Even a 36000bph mechanical watch is only 10Hz (0.1 second period).

However the precisionist's second hand moves at a lesisurely 16Hz. So....

Movement	Second hand movement frequency
Standard Quartz	1Hz
Mechanical, 28800bph	8Hz
Mechanical, 36000bph	10Hz
Bulova Precisionist	16Hz
Bulova Accutron	300Hz
Seiko Spring Drive	Smoooooth

Note that Bulova built / licenced the Accutron (tuning fork movement) to a few other brands, including Omega, Eterna & Zenith. Titoni and Titus watches also used the tuning fork, but I've heard that these were produced using a glut of old movements long after Accutron production ceased.

[GC8]

18,000 for stopwatches 1/5th of a second increments

[PJ S]

Doofus said:

I think Chopard did a 57,600BPH movement. 16 beats per second.

Chopard L.U.C. 8hz — Breguet have a 10Hz (72K vph)
I think I’m right in saying Seiko did a 56K under Credor, but was a very LE model and wasn’t rolled out further.

[lostkiwi]

Tag did the Mikrotimer
https://www.tagheuer.com/en-gb/tag-heuer-carrera-m...

[NDA]

lostkiwi said:

Tag did the Mikrotimer
https://www.tagheuer.com/en-gb/tag-heuer-carrera-m...

That looks interesting.... I wonder what the service intervals are for something that fast?!