First stop, the Digital Crown. Apple made a lot of fuss over how cool this is, so of course we put it in a box and shot it full of rays.

Despite its tiny size, the crown features a very classical mechanical design—threaded components and a hefty bushing.

As we saw in our original teardown, the portion of the crown shaft on the inside of the watch body is covered in tiny notches. Immediately below this, what appears to be an optical emitter/sensor reads as the notches spin by.

Boom, encoder.