Clock movements are the engines, or motors, that regulate the turning and positioning of the hands for correct time telling. Clock movements were commonly mechanical and analog, but in modern-day times they are virtually specifically digital, and either analog or digital. Regardless, the function required boils down to the dimension of the angle subtended by each hand at every minute.

Clock movements are typically described as electric motors, and the terms are virtually compatible. The force behind a mechanical one was either a coiled springtime or a hanging weight creating a flywheel to transform. To prevent "self-contained," or runaway rotation, pendulums and escapement devices were employed, establishing an oscillation that had actually a particularly derived regularity.

The modern-day digital movement acquires its power from a quartz crystal vibrating at a details frequency that corresponds to the geometry of the crystal. With a voltage decline related to the crystal, it discharges a series of pulses at the resonant frequency. Building up the number of pulses into an electronic register monitors the amount of expired time.