I was reading this section of the guardian newspaper (A UK publication) and came across this query from a reader.

How has my sports watch kept going for 25 years without a battery change?

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeand...ueries?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Copy_to_clipboard

The first response was an interesting read about a particular type of quartz known as icebreaker quartz. Here is the response from a reader. I might try to find a Paul Stennett watch now. Probably easier to find a Rolex sports watch at RRP.

Here is the reply:
If the interface is digital, then it is possible that you own a Paul Stennett self-winder. It may be branded 'Anderson' in gold, cursive script below the LCD screen.

You have identified the timepiece as a sports watch, which makes it unlikely to be the rare Mattacks Cakes branded variant, of which only twenty were ever made, as unlikely prizes for a 1994 World Darts Championship-themed competition.

Paul Stennett was a budget jeweller and self-taught watchmaker who resided in Swindon, during the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s. He traded primarily by mail, advertising his business in the classified pages of local and national newspapers and magazines.

He was also known to attend markets and boot-sales across the south-west of England. During my research, I came across a brief newspaper article referring to a man by the same name who had been barred from markets in Bristol following numerous breaches of trading standards, however I cannot confidently confirm that this is the same person.

You would have to ask Paul Stennett himself, who is apparently still alive and living in Canada. Stennett's brief, opportunistic foray into professional watchmaking occurred following the discovery of a large ammonite fossil, wrapped in flour sacking, in the garden shed of his late grandfather. The ridges of the fossil were colonised by a cloudy whitish mineral that he identified as quartz.

Unbeknownst to Stennett at the time, what he had chanced upon was a small deposit of rare icebreaker quartz, which was formerly quarried in large quantities on the Masters islands, south-west of Greenland, where is was used as ballast in ice ships, prior to being discarded on the seabed when it was of no longer needed.

This seemingly abundant mineral, which was regrettably discovered too early for its technological potential to be exploited, has been found nowhere else in the world and occupies multiple lists of scarce global resources, complied by various agencies who concern themselves with such things.

Icebreaker quartz crystals present something of a chicken and egg conundrum: They are piezoelectric, vibrating when exposed to electricity, with the signature of the vibration varying according to the age of the quartz. These oscillations generate a sustained, weak electrical charge that is sufficient for the crystal to operate as a power cell.

What came first – the vibration that generates the charge, or the charge that causes the vibration is a matter of peer-reviewed debate within the scientific community, and wide-eyed speculation elsewhere.

Inside a watch, the quartz will function both as a time keeper and as a battery with a life that can be measured in geological ages.

Stennett, who claimed to have sold, or given away, all of his watches, would belatedly christen his creation 'the self-winder' in reference both to the coiled fossil from whence he had obtained its core component and also to its perpetual power cell.

It has been pointed out that, for a watch powered and regulated by icebreaker quartz to remain accurate as a functional timepiece, it would require software capable of adjusting to the degrading vibrations of the quartz crystal.

A counter argument is that, the kind of variation in frequency that would significantly impact upon the ability of a watch to keep good time, would develop over hundreds, if not thousands of years, by which time the other components of the watch would have likely worn out. In fact the core of many Stennett watches – consisting of a disc of icebreaker quartz, the same diameter as an aspirin – has commonly been transferred from one timepiece to another.

The esteemed British actor, John Raisman, who is currently playing the character of Bronte in the American teen soap opera, Queens Crossing, owns a Stennett disc, stamped with his initials, that has thus-far occupied seven different watches.

In the case that you do indeed own a bona fide Stennett, my advice would be to treat it as an heirloom to passed from generation to generation, as it migrates from timepiece to timepiece. I hope this is of help.