C-01Hand-wound chronograph with date
A physical simulation of a mechanical watch. It keeps its own time. Everything here runs from the mainspring. The hands are moved by the balance’s beats, counted, and by nothing else. Rate, amplitude and beat error are set nowhere: they come out of the mechanics, flaws included.
MovementHand-wound, column wheel, date
Beat4 Hz, 28 800 an hour
Jewels31, ruby pallets, blue in the chronograph
Power reserve–
CaseSteel, 37.4 mm, 10 mm thick
GlassSapphire, front and back
StrapRubber, integrated
Using it
- Look
- Drag to turn, scroll to zoom, right-drag to move. Double-click a part to bring it to the middle and turn about it. Cmd 0 (Ctrl 0) goes back out to the view.
- Names
- Rest the pointer on a part to see what it is and what it does. With depth of field on, the lens focuses there.
- Anatomy
- Under the views: the watch put together a chapter at a time, each part shown doing its work, cased last.
- Crown
- Drag across it to wind. Tap it to pull it out and set the hands.
- Pushers
- Click the one at 2 to start and stop the chronograph, the one at 4 to reset it once stopped.
- Views
- Down the left edge: the dial, the case and its back, the movement seen through, alone or drawn apart, and each of its works. The up and down arrow keys step through them.
- Bench
- In Scene, under Experimental: warm the watch, bring a magnet, take out the pallet fork, regulate it.
The movement
What is not simulated
Seznam se vede anglicky, spolu s kódem.
From the author
I build digital products, but I’ve always admired mechanical watches more than I understood them. Designing one and making it work in code seemed like the best way to learn.
C-01 is my own design: a skeletonised, hand-wound chronograph with a date. Every component was designed specifically for it, without borrowing from an existing calibre. The movement isn’t a collection of looping animations. The mainspring drives the gear train, the escapement delivers impulses to the balance, and the hands advance according to its oscillations. Leave it running, and it will gain or lose a few seconds a day, much like a real mechanical watch.
Of course, it’s still a watch made of code, not metal. A watchmaker would find plenty to correct, and I’ve documented the compromises above. Whenever I had to choose between mechanical accuracy and clarity, I chose to make the mechanism easier to understand.