Time is such a big part of our lives. We plan our days around it. But have you ever stopped to think about how a watch actually works inside?
I never did either, until one day, my wristwatch fell on the floor. When I looked at its tiny parts, I saw little springs, levers and all sorts of strange-looking pieces. I was surprised to see how small and delicate they were, and how all these little parts worked together to tell the time.
I wanted to know more, so I started looking up how a watch works from the inside. That’s when I came across a page called Mechanical Watch by Bartosz Ciechanowski.
The page looks plain at first. White page, lots of words. But right at the top there’s a watch you can drag around with your finger, and a slider that peels it open so you can see inside.
It starts with the power and there’s no battery. Just a metal spring coiled up in a little round box. You wind it and it stores energy, then lets it out slowly. But let it out like that and the hand would spin wildly and stop in seconds. So the page shows how gears slow everything down.
Then comes the tick. A small wheel swings back and forth four times every second. Each swing knocks a little fork, and the fork lets the gears move one small step. That’s the tick we hear. It adds up to 28,800 of them in an hour. I counted on my calculator, and yes, it’s right.
The tiny bearings are made of synthetic ruby. There’s also a part called the click, named after the sound it makes. When you pull the crown all the way out, the watch stops, allowing you to set the time exactly.
The page explains how a watch works on the inside through brilliant animated illustrations that you can interact with and move around yourself.
Bartosz Ciechanowski says it himself at the end that mechanical watches aren’t as accurate as digital ones, and they break more easily.
Still, after reading this, you’ll look at a ticking watch with more appreciation than you ever did.
Visit: ciechanow.ski/mechanical-watch
Published in Dawn, Young World, October 17th, 2026
