Watch Displays
As one of the most important devices invented by humanity, the watch is a crucial part of a person’s identity in many cases. All watches have a display which is used to show the wearer what time it is, but they do come in a huge range of varieties and styles. No matter what sort of look a person is seeking there is likely a watch that can cater to their taste. From glow in the dark watch styles like Indiglo that uses electricity to glow or other variations of this style that utilize phosphorescent paint, to highly styled and artistic displays, there is a display that can suit the needs of nearly any watch fan. However, there are two major types of watch displays that need to be covered because they are the ones that are most prevalent today as the primary types available.
The traditional style of watch display is, of course, the analog display. This is the type seen on old fashioned clocks where one or two hands rotate about a numbered circle that is used to mark both the hours and minutes, sometimes even as detailed as including seconds. The analog style generally includes two hands, one for the hour and one for the minutes, but there are also those models that have a third hand used for ticking off the seconds. Sometimes this seconds hand is referred to as a ’sweep second hand’ because rather than moving at a tick per second, it moves at a rate of 1/5th second, thus making it appear to be in constant motion rather than making short leaps as the typical hands do. Usually, in a watch of the analog variety, the watch itself has a mechanical movement, but there are also analog watches that are run through a battery the way a digital watch would be run.
Nearly all watches sold for higher end purposes, such as for jewelry or collector’s items, are analog display. They are favored because they can be much more unique in appearance than the average digital watch in their number markings, the styles of their hands and so forth. Most people feel that the analog display is the easier to read of the two, as well.
Digital display watches are a more recent innovation and generally are associated with a quartz movement. This means that they have far more accuracy than is possible with a mechanical movement. The first of these watches was brought to the market in 1970 and their popularity has only increased since then. The first of these digital displays utilized an LED (Light Emitting Diode) to show the time in numerical format similar to the digital display clocks that preceded them. Since the LED type display uses a large amount of battery, the user had to press down a button in order to see the display light up. Because this was an extremely inefficient use of battery power, the LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) was invented and it is the prevalent form of digital display used in watches made today. This style is not very common in high end watches collector’s market, but they are the mainstay style for those who want to do time keeping with precision.