Yep, almost all watches are machine assembled... *LINK*
: One thing I didn't realize is the mechanical
: movements are machine assembeled? Wow, that
: shoots my dreams of the old watch maker
: assembling these things, but it's truely
Yep, and I hate to be the one to tell you, but those cookies you love aren't baked by little elves inside a hollow tree either!
I'll quote from my own site here:
ROMANTIC NOTIONS OF WATCHMAKING are MOSTLY UNIMPORTANT and OFTEN FALSE OR MISLEADING
Many fine watchmakers try to give the feel that their expensive products are finely hand crafted. They do this by creating an image of your watch being made by generation old families of dedicated watch craftsmen, in a quaint village in the Swiss Alps, with movements made by the same people who make the rest of the watch, each crafted over long periods of time. But all of that is nothing more than romantic baloney designed to make you feel better about spending so much money on a watch. The truth is that very few watches under US $20,000 are hand crafted. Most are mass produced by machines in large quantities. Even the highly reputed Rolex is mass produced--they make over a million watches a year! Notions of the movement of the watch being better if made 'in-house' than if made by a separate company (even if owned by the same parent organization) are antiquated concepts that have little to no meaning in the modern age of large corporations and mass production. In fact, it is the modern techniques of mass production that ensure the higher level of consistency and quality that we enjoy of modern watches.
