High-performance quartz movements A quartz movement gets its energy from a battery. The regulating mechanism is a quartz crystal which vibrates at a very high frequency when an electric current is passed through it. This ensures almost absolute accuracy -- to within a few seconds a month. back to top
Automatic movements in the best watchmaking tradition An automatic movement has a mechanical movement which winds itself through the normal acton of your wrist as you wear the watch. The freely spinning rotor in the movement turns both ways on its axis to wind the mainspring. The regulating mechanism of the watch is the spring-balance, which vibrates six to eight times a second. An automatic movement is comprised of more than 70 parts, the smallest of which is hair-thin (0.07mm). Automatics do not have the accuracy of quartz movements, but they keep time to within a few minutes a month and represent the culmination of traditional Swiss watchmaking skills and know-how. back to top

Sophisticated Chronographs

A chronograph is a watch that not only displays the hours, minutes and seconds of conventional time, but also measures the duration of a given event, notably in sports timing. All chronographs, whether quartz or automatic, have three basic functions in common:
  1. Simple time measurement

    2. This function measures the time of any event lasting up to 12 hours, from a 100-meter race to an allday sailing regatta.

  2. Additional time measurement

    3. This function records several consecutive results and adds them together to measure the cumulating time. The chronograph hands are stopped and restarted at each pause.

  3. The tachometer

    4. Chronographs have a tachometer scale that converts the time elapsed over a unit of distance (one mile of one kilometer) into average speed (m.p.h. or km/h). back to top

source: TAG Heuer General Catalog