Why wasn an Automatic Watch chosen by NASA?
One of the reasons that NASA chose a manual wind watch for space flight crew use was that they wanted a chronograph and automatic chronographs would not be perfected until 1969. In addition NASA had the mistaken belief gravity needed to be present in order to cause the Rotor to work. As Newton described objects at rest tend to stay at rest unless acted upon by a force. When the watch is moved, the rotor wants to stay put. Since its center of mass (somewhere in the middle of the rotor plate) is not its center of effort (the rotor shaft), it spins. Along the way, it winds the watch. However, what is important in this equation isn’t gravity, but rather Inertia… To see a demonstration of how Inertia works on a automatic watch take any display back watch automatic or an automatic with the caseback off and hold the watch with the dial down…. One can easily set the rotor spinning moving the watch in a circular motion. Gravity doesn’t play a significant part, because the rotor is more or l
