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Does your watch hack? If you’re not sure, “hacking” in the watch world has nothing to do with computers. A hack watch is defined as “a mechanical watch whose movement offers a mechanism for stopping and setting the second hand of the watch, then restarting the watch the instant the time setting matches the time displayed by a reference timepiece”, according to Wikipedia. Basically, if you’re setting the time oin your watch and the seconds hand stops when you pull it out, then your watch “hacks”. If the seconds hand keeps running, then it doesn’t.
History Of The Hack Watch
Most watches nowadays incorporate hacking (aka a stop-seconds feature) – even the cheapest of quartz watches. This wasn’t always the case, however. My pocket watches don’t hack, for instance, but they’re also around a hundred years old (or older).The ability to hack a watch didn’t really become common until around WW2, when it was specifically requested as a feature in military watches. The ability to stop the seconds hand and synchronize coordinated military actions was critical.
So, Do All Modern Watches Hack?
Not necessarily. Although most modern Seiko 5 watches are now utilizing the 4R series movements that offer hacking, but before this, the trust 7S26 movement was often the “go-to” choice. My Seiko 5 Military (SNZG15) is powered by the 7S26 movement, and it doesn’t hack. Neither does my trust Seiko SKX009.
I paid only about $150 bucks for each of these Seiko watches, so maybe it’s a function of price? Once again, not necessarily. The iconic Omega Speedmaster Professional, powered by Omega’s 1861 chronograph movement, doesn’t hack. You read that right. A watch that retails for $5,000 to $6,000 doesn’t have the simple ability to stop the seconds hand from moving when the crown is pulled out to set the time.
There Are Options For Those Non-Hacking Watches, However…
If you’re like me, and like to synchronize your watch to the exact second when you’re setting the time, then you may be thinking a non-hacking watch might be a deal-breaker. But before you disregard that Speedmaster or Seiko SKX you’ve been eyeing, know that there is a solution to your problems. It’s called back-hacking, and it allows you to kinds, sorta “hack” the watch, just in a different way.
Although it’s probably not great for the long-term health of your watches movement if you do it all the time, or even make the seconds hand run backwards, it does allow you to accurately set the time to the second.
Wrapping Things Up
Hacking is a pretty common feature today, but it wasn’t always. Originally brought to provenance by the military and the need for precision, the ability to hack a watch is a nice feature to have, but not absolutely necessary. If your watch doesn’t hack, you can always “back hack”. The guys who first set foot on the moon didn’t need hacking to get the job done after all. If you’re interested in a new Speedmaster, however, the new co-axial 3861 movements finally provide Moonwatch fans with this feature. Seiko’s entry-level mechanical watches also provide hacking nowadays. So it seems that the lack of a stop-seconds feature on a modern wristwatch is all but extinct anyways.