dumb watch question

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Jul 20, 1999
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Thanks to Gadgets and Gear, I have recently discovered the world of watches and watch forums. There sure is some very cool stuff out there!

Anyway, and this question will certainly reveal my level of knowlege of the watch world, but what is the difference between a watch and a chronograph?
thanks
 
A watch is a chronograph that you wear on your wrist. My latin may be a bit rusty but I take chrono-graph to mean 'time displayer (or time picture)' and chrono-meter as 'time measure'.

My Omega SMP has some sort of official chromometer certification that I've never bothered to read but I gather mechanical watch manufacturers have this as a standard to attain.
 
When referring to watches a chronograph is oen that is designed for secondary timing of events in addition to displaying the actual time.

They have extra buttons and smaller inlaid dials for timing.
 
Thanks guys. Right after I posted this I found a FAQ on timezone.com that had this to say:

4.1 What is a chronometer? What is a chronograph?
These two terms are commonly confused among new watch aficionados. They actually have very little to do with each other.
A chronometer is a watch which has passed a test given by the Contrôle Officiel Suisse des Chronometres, or COSC. The COSC is an official Swiss government agency which tests watches to ensure that they fit within a narrow-but-usually-obtainable window of acceptable error (i.e., the rate in all positions falls into the range of -4 seconds/day to +6 seconds/day). While some watch companies tout their products as having a COSC certificate, it really is not that difficult to pass the test, and over 95% of the watches submitted pass. Another factor to consider is that the COSC does not test watches as they are sold in the store, but movements fitted with a temporary case, dial and hands. In addition, the COSC certificate cannot say anything about how the movement was handled after testing. For more information on COSC testing and the meaning of the results reported on the COSC certificate, see Mike Disher's article "Reading and Understanding a COSC Certificate". Several watch manufacturers actually put more stringent tests than the COSC procedures on all of their watch production (the JLC Master Control 1000-Hour series is probably the most well known.) Paul Schliesser has written an essay on how COSC testing is performed.

A chronograph is a watch that tells the time of day and also allows the user to time events of short-to-medium durations (i.e. from a few seconds to a few hours, typically). This is usually done in a mechanical watch through the central seconds hand, and one or more subdials (the regular, or continuous seconds, is also located on a dial). Chronographs are of varying usefulness, and are an interesting complication to put on a watch, as they often give the watch a sporty image. In addition to elapsed time, chronographs are often fitted with several scales designed to measure other things, such as pulse rate or units manufactured per hour. Mike Margolis has written a short discourse on chronograph scales.

A typical modern chronograph is operated with two pushers: one to start and stop the timing, and a second to reset the hands to zero when the timing is stopped. (In some older chronos with only one-button for control, the sequence of pushes was start-stop-reset - there was no provision to continue timing once the mechanism was stopped.)
 
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