Not sure if this has already been posted, but found this great animation/explenation on how a mechanical watch works.
I have a couple myself, but never really understood how they worked.
Enjoy

 

This is a nice video. It’s wonderful how people manage to break down and illustrate things that can otherwise be so complicated.

There are in fact several of these (have a look at YouTube). I like this one (try to get the version with the music!):

 

Thanks! clearly shows here what the escapement does, which was not very clear in the first video

 

Freaking amazing. It's a wonder how someone came up with the concept and design of a mechanical watch. "Baby, I'm amazed by you"

 

This version has been highlighted here before – but worth repeating for this thread. From 1949, Hamilton, it takes nearly 20 minutes. Again, nicely done. Yes, a wonder.

 

Hardly a wonder, It's all rather basic really.

You simply start with a clepsydra, let it develop over a couple of thousand years, add in quite a few geniuses along the way and you end up where we are today.

 

Of course these (beautiful) videos explain the workings of a mechanical watch. Things changed with the introduction of automatic movements – and then quartz. The following might help you to understand these:

 

The voice of the presenter reminded me of so many (too many!) instructional movies (no videos then) that I had to watch in the 1970's until we got video tapes and internet.

 

Everyone knew they were in for a ride when this badboy entered the room:

 

Yeah the dingle arm does make the difference

 

Thanks @Perre! Yeah, I remember film strips from school. <snore> That was before VCRs, so we had actual film projectors for the "talkies".

 

That was college! Back in high school it was film projectors. In primary school it was mostly a slide projector that had an audio tape to go along with it. The cassette tape would beep when the teacher was supposed to advance the slides. We were all blown away when a model showed up that would advance the slides automatically!

 

The model in our school was clad in a bikini, aged 22. They combined the physics class with biology.

 

Co-axial escapement.
Still not sure what’s going on