For those people who do not wear their watches on a daily basis there are watch winders that keep them wound when not in use
. This is a handy accessory when the time device features moon phases and a calendar. This device can hold more than one watch at a time and can also move them in their circular patterns according to the motion the human being wearing it would use to keep it working.
Older time pieces need to be kept wound as the lubricants tend to congeal and this causes it to fall behind in time. Modern time pieces use synthetic oils which congeal much slower, but never the less, when it is not used over a long period of time, the oils may cause damage to the mechanics.
Mechanical watches have mainsprings that wound themselves automatically. It uses the motion of the human being that is wearing it. Today one will most likely buy a self winding arm timepiece. The mechanics are made up of a semicircular rotor that is attached to the winding machine. As the arm of the person is in motion, it circulates the rotor which goes through a series of reversers and when it reduces the gears, they mainspring is wound.
The Swiss have always been known as the masters of timepieces. It was Abraham Louis Perrelet who invented the self winding mechanism in the year seventeen seventy. This was done for pocket time devices. This also made use of the motion of the person carrying the pocket timepiece. During those times one required up to fifteen minutes to wind the clock completely and hoping it would work for a period of eight days.
The latest developments are electronic and powered solely by arm movement. In this case the rotor powers up an electrical generator that charges the accumulator. In most cases the accumulator will be a rechargeable battery. This kinetic movement was designed by Seiko.