Do you know what the small dials do? What about the buttons at the side?

A lot of people buy their watch for its atheistic look and often are unsure what their watch can actually do.

Today we’re talking about chronograph watches, commonly referred to as ‘Chronos’. Chronos are watches with the ability to time things, basically a stopwatch for an analogue watch. Generally a chronograph watch will have two extra buttons at the side and some smaller dials on the main dial – these are called sub dials. The two buttons are used for setting the chrono up initially and to function the chrono. The top button starts and stops the chrono running while the bottom button will reset the chrono. The sub dials record the time elapsed so far in seconds, minutes and even hours in some cases.

Chronos can be confusing because in a lot of cases, one of the small dials will actually record the seconds for the normal daily time. Equally as confusing, what looks like the second hand is actually only the seconds for the chrono stopwatch function. Take the example above, the sub dial at the 6 position actually shows the seconds for the main time. The big red hand is the second hand for the chrono function. So, if you have a chrono watch and both the hands are moving, you might want to reset the chrono (using the button at the side) as it will be draining power at a quicker rate.