The History of the Wristwatch

Curiously, the modern wristwatch is a little more than one hundred years old. Although personal, portable time pieces had been around since the 1400s, they were crafted one at a time and were luxury items produced for the nobility and wealthy. The first known wristwatch was crafted in the 1830s and for the next 70 years, wristwatches were not produced in large quantity. They were thought of as bracelets with a watch attached, the watch being a portion of the adornment and usually not very good at keeping time.

The 19th century was a period of furious innovation and clock making was caught up in all the changes that were occurring world-wide. The pace of life for many people no longer followed the slower pace of seasonal change and sun-up, sun-down reckoning. A case in point was a railway collision which killed many dozens because a passenger train was four minutes late; it collided with a freight train head on because it was already supposed to have cleared that section of track. For railway workers, watches were a very serious necessity.

And because the need for an inexpensive reliable portable time piece was becoming wide-spread, there were watch and clock makers starting businesses to meet this growing demand. Many of the best known brand names can trace their company beginnings to this exciting time of innovation and growth: Timex, Omega, TAG Heuer and Seiko, as well as many others.

Because clock making had long been the province of guilds and family tradition, the watch industry grew out of the cottages of France and Switzerland. Gears, jeweled pinions and most of the internal mechanisms were made in Europe. Most watch makers modified these parts and developed their own casing, dials and hands. Eventually, the manufacture of the internal pieces spread to North America and Asia to address the resistance that European craftsmen had to industrial practices. Key winding gave way to the stem. Roskopf gearing gave a quick, cheap alternative to jeweling. Still the standard method for carrying a watch was a fob or chain attached to a vest (in case it was dropped )and a pocket to put it in when not in use.

Military officers and aviators began to overturn the masculine aversion to wearing a watch on the wrist. Great War veterans would shatter the aversion. During the war they needed a hands free way of checking the elapsing minutes. Watchmakers had difficulty keeping up with the military demands. The case designs were still heavy, accuracy could be off by several minutes in 24 hours, the crystal face was prone to cracking and there was a constant threat of water damage.

Continue Reading... Part II of the History of the Wristwatch