Watches × Materials Science
Etched, Not Forged: How Semiconductor Fabrication Conquered the Mechanical Watch
Marcus Thorne · Apr 7, 2026
For 500 years, watchmakers bent metal into hairsprings by hand. Then the semiconductor industry offered photolithography and Deep Reactive Ion Etching. One 200 mm wafer now yields hundreds of identical hairsprings, each within a micron of specification.