What would be the minimum number of parts, to build an automatic movement that simply has hour, minute and second hand without any complication, with an accuracy of +/- 7 seconds / day???
This is a question raised by someone who has just bought an IWC!!!
Cheers...Kelvin
as you might guess it depends on the movement but I would say around 150...
I recall an article in Chronos about the ETA-Valjoux 7750 having cca. 179 parts, while being a chronograph day-date movement.
Number of parts strongly depend on the construction and the niveau of the caliber. Excuse me but I do not really see the practical use of this question, could be pure theoretic issue.
If I recall, I have read of some simple movements of under 100 parts.
Much also depends on how parts are counted. For example, often ball bearings under a rotor often are counted as one, since they each serve the same function.
If Ludwig Oeschlin is making it, then I'd say 3, otherwise 100+
I guess improvement happens when we don't have enough resource to create something of value or to solve a problem...in another arena, say information technology, application programmers are constantly streamlining their scripts / programing to come up with applications that would take up less space with improved efficency.
