Patent Application
20080170474
The present application is a continuation of international application 2006WO-EP062669 (WO07031347) of May 29, 2006, the content of which is included by reference, and which claims priority of Swiss patent application 2005CH-1485 of Sep. 13, 2005, the contents whereof are included by reference.
The present invention concerns the field of watch-making, in particular watches or watch components for displaying indications in a window.
Watches and watch movements for displaying indications in the form of numeric symbols in a window are known per se. It is for example frequent to display the date, i.e. the day of the month, in the form of a digit in a window. Watches with several windows for displaying for example the tens of the dates in a first window and the units in another window also enjoy renewed popularity thanks to the readability of the indications made possible by the use of larger digits.
The indications displayed through the window are most often borne by a mobile, for example in the form of a disc, ring, cross, star, polygon etc. bearing different numeric indications. The mobile is driven by the movement that makes it advance by indexation step corresponding to the distance between the indications, so as to make the required indication appear through a window in the watch dial. Watch movements can also be conceived in which the mobiles are driven independently of the hands and of the other watch indicators by means of a stepping motor driving the hands.
WO2005006087 describes a watch provided with a chronograph comprising three windows for the mechanical and numeric display of the minutes and hours measured by the chronograph. Three indexed discs bearing digits turn behind the windows to supply the required indication. Another watch with three windows is described in WO2002093273. The use of three windows however requires a complex and delicate mechanism. Moreover, the windows take up considerable space on the dial.
Although the displaying of symbols in a window is appreciated and affords good readability, it is not possible to increase the number of windows in an unlimited manner without unacceptable aesthetic and space requirement constraints. Therefore, the number of indications displayed in the windows is limited; many indications, despite being useful, are not displayed for lack of space on the dial.
One aim of the present invention is thus to propose a timepiece free from these limitations, in particular a timepiece that makes better use of the windows and makes it possible to display more information without jeopardizing the readability of the display.
EP415734 describes a watch wherein a date or day of the week window allows additional graphical symbols to be displayed to indicate the morning or the afternoon. These additional symbols occupy additional indexation positions on the mobile. The size of the date or day of the week indications is thus reduced.
EP744675 describes a timepiece comprising a window allowing the battery level to be displayed next to a date or weekday indication. This instrument requires a movement capable of shifting the position of the mobile relative to fixed indexation positions. Again, in the case of a date display, the size of the numbers 1 to 31 must be reduced to leave space for the battery level indication.
CH190208 describes a timepiece having a dial allowing several mobiles for displaying the date, the month, the year and the day of the week, to be seen simultaneously. This construction requires several superimposed mobiles and considerable concessions as regards the size of the indications displayed in the window.
GB2017356 describes a device allowing the days of the week to be displayed in a first color in the morning and in another color in the afternoon.
WO2006/018157 describes a watch having a mobile for displaying one after the other the date, the moon phase or the end-of-life state of the battery. These indications are not displayed simultaneously.
These aims are achieved notably by means of a timepiece having the characteristics of claim 1.
This solution has the advantage of using the display space inside the windows better by displaying simultaneously several independent indications.
In a preferred embodiment, two indications independent from one another but both depending on absolute time are displayed simultaneously in a same window.
The space available on a window mobile is limited and it is not easily possible to inscribe therein with sufficient size all the combination possibilities of several sequences having each many possible indications. In a preferred embodiment, one of the sequences of indications is composed of several numeric or alphanumeric symbols whilst the other independent sequence has two values, for example {morning; afternoon}, {switched on; switched off}, or {operating mode 1; operating mode 2}.
In a preferred embodiment, a first indication, corresponding for example to a date or to a date digit, is displayed in the form of numeric symbol whilst another independent indication, representing for example the morning or the afternoon, is displayed by a choice of the color of the numeric symbol or of the background, or by other non numeric and/or non-alphanumeric symbols.
According to the invention, a second indication is added only to the indication of the tens of the date of a grande date display. The mobile of the date's tens must usually only display the possible values from 0 to 3 and it is thus possible to combine this relatively short sequence with another sequence, for example a binary sequence, without increasing in excessive fashion the number of combinations of indications the mobile has to display. Furthermore, the date's tens change only 4 times a month at most, so that few rotations are necessary for displaying all the possible combinations of indications.
The invention is also executed by means of a timepiece having a grande date display wherein the date's tens are displayed differently, for example in another color, in the morning and afternoon.
The invention will be better understood by reading an example of embodiment illustrated by the figures, wherein:
In the following description and claims, the expression “timepiece” designates for example a wristwatch, a movement for wristwatch, or another watch component for a watch to be worn on the body. The description refers in particular to a wristwatch.
The timepiece 1, illustrated from the front in
The timepiece illustrated in this example further has a groove (flange) 11 provided with 24 indications 110 of time zones, each time zone being signaled by a city name. The user can switch the time zone displayed by the hands 20, 21 and used for calculating the date and the morning/afternoon indication by moving, in a suitable mode, the seconds' hand towards the time zone selected by means of appropriate actions on the push-buttons A, B and on the time set and mode switch crown 102.
The crown 102 can occupy three distinct axial positions, for example a stable intermediary position C=0 (resting position), an instable pressed-in position C=−1 to enter into alarm mode or time zone mode, and a pulled-back position C=+1 for setting the date and the time. The crown preferably reverts of itself from the pressed-in position −1 to the intermediary position 0 when it is released. Two mono-stable push-buttons A and B are further provided.
The two mobiles 232, 233 can be driven directly or indirectly by the stepping motor actuating notably the hours' hand. In a preferred embodiment, these mobiles are driven, independently of the hours' hand and preferably independently from one another, by means of actuators constituted by stepping motors independent of the motors actuating the hands and preferably bidirectional.
The first mobile 232 bears a sequence of indications 2320, 2321, 2322 on its surface. The indications 2320 and 2321 correspond in this example to tens of the date (day of the month) and can thus take the values 0 (that can also be represented by a space), 1, 2 or 3. According to the invention, each possible value of the tens of the date is inscribed twice, in two different manners, on the mobile 232. The first series of indications 2320 is used in this example in the morning whilst the second series of indications is used in the afternoon. Both types of indications 2320, 2321 are distinguished from one another in the illustrated example by the background color. It is for example possible to use a mocha color to illustrate the morning and a sunny yellow color for the afternoon. Other background color combinations can of course be used. It is also possible to distinguish the morning from the afternoon by the color of the numeric symbols or by the fonts used for the morning and the afternoon, or by graphic symbols or alphabetical indications (e.g. a.m./p.m.) placed next to or over the numeric symbol of the date. Thus, for most of the indexation positions of said mobile, an indication of the date's tens is displayed at the same time as the morning or afternoon indication in the same window. The disc of the date's tens is thus indexed twice a day: a noon in one direction and at midnight in the other direction, except when the date's tens change. Using a bidirectional stepping motor to drive this mobile makes it possible to reduce the rotation angle necessary at noon or at midnight, and thus to commute more rapidly the display in the window 230 whilst reducing the electric consumption.
The mobile 232 also bears for certain indexing positions icons 2322 illustrating an operating mode of the timepiece. In the illustrated example, two icons indicating an “alarm on” or “alarm off” mode are used. These icons can for example be displayed through the window 230 when the timepiece is in alarm time setting mode; activating or deactivating the alarm is then performed by means of a push-button A, B or of the crown, and immediately illustrated by a corresponding rotation of the mobile 232.
The second mobile 233 illustrated in
The morning or afternoon indications borne by the mobile 232 can relate to the current time displayed by the hands 20-22, but also to another time, for example to the alarm setting time or to the time of another time zone temporarily displayed by the hands 20 to 22 or by other hands or indicators (not represented).
| Number | Date | Country | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| 20051485 | Sep 2005 | CH | national |
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Parent | PCT/EP2006/062669 | May 2006 | US |
| Child | 12033499 | US |
