{"id":567,"date":"2014-08-29T11:28:24","date_gmt":"2014-08-29T11:28:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saturnsports.co.uk\/blog\/?p=567"},"modified":"2014-08-29T11:28:24","modified_gmt":"2014-08-29T11:28:24","slug":"timeless-inventions-self-winding-watches-and-pedometers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saturnsports.co.uk\/blog\/timeless-inventions-self-winding-watches-and-pedometers\/","title":{"rendered":"Timeless inventions: Self-winding watches and pedometers"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_569\" style=\"width: 185px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-569\" class=\"size-full wp-image-569\" src=\"https:\/\/www.saturnsports.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/abraham-louis-perrelet.jpg\" alt=\"Abraham-Louis Perrelet (1729-1826)\" width=\"175\" height=\"224\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-569\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Abraham-Louis Perrelet \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 (born 1729, died 1826)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>In today&#8217;s blog post, we take a\u00a0look at the life of the man responsible for bringing us self-winding pocket watches and pedometers. A\u00a0master watchmaker and brilliant inventor, Abraham-Louis Perrelet.<\/p>\n<p>Watchmaker Perrelet was born in Switzerland in 1729 and was the inventor of a self-winding pocket-watch mechanism, which is still used in modern wristwatches.<\/p>\n<p>Designed to wind itself, an oscillating weight inside the watch would move up and down as the owner moved, winding the mainspring and turning the gears to move the hands.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The spinning rotor in all automatic watches that responds to the wearers movement was officially recognised as an invention in 1777.<\/p>\n<p>Perrelet was always an innovative watchmaker, despite beginning work with his father who was a farmer and carpenter. By the age of 20, Perrelet took the decision to pursue a career in watch-making. He succeeded in creating the first watches with cylinder, duplex, date and equation escapements as well as perfecting pinions, wheels, escapements and winding mechanisms.<\/p>\n<p><div id=\"attachment_581\" style=\"width: 185px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-581\" src=\"https:\/\/www.saturnsports.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/fastime-pedometer.jpg\" alt=\"A modern Fastime pedometer\" width=\"175\" height=\"175\" class=\"size-full wp-image-581\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.saturnsports.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/fastime-pedometer.jpg 175w, https:\/\/www.saturnsports.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/fastime-pedometer-150x150.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 175px) 100vw, 175px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-581\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A modern Fastime pedometer.<\/p><\/div>In 1780 Perrelet created the first pedometer &#8211; a device that counts each step a person takes by detecting motion of the hips. Originally utilised by sports and fitness enthusiasts, pedometers are now popular for measuring activity and are a useful motivator.<\/p>\n<p>A watchmaker into old age, one of his last timepieces was devised at the age of 96 &#8211; it is now held at the Musee International d&#8217;horlogerie (International Museum of Horology) in Switzerland. Abraham-Louis Perrelet died in 1826 after almost 80 years devotion to watch-making techniques.<\/p>\n<p>The Perrelet name lived on with the birth in 1781 of Louis-Frederic, who inherited his grandfather&#8217;s extraordinary talent for watch-making. His natural flair for astronomy, physics and mathematics led to the creation of &#8220;intel-ligent&#8221; watches and an astronomical clock &#8211; the latter earning Louis-Frederic Perrelet a royal appointment as watch-maker-engineer to three kings of France.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In today&#8217;s blog post, we take a\u00a0look at the life of the man responsible for bringing us self-winding pocket watches and pedometers. A\u00a0master watchmaker and brilliant inventor, Abraham-Louis Perrelet. Watchmaker Perrelet was born in Switzerland in 1729 and was the inventor of a self-winding pocket-watch mechanism, which is still used in modern wristwatches. Designed to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saturnsports.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saturnsports.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saturnsports.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saturnsports.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saturnsports.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=567"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.saturnsports.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":582,"href":"https:\/\/www.saturnsports.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567\/revisions\/582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saturnsports.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saturnsports.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saturnsports.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}