Back to The Watch.

Watches have been around for some time. We know for sure that watches were made in Germany since about 1500 AD, but there is some evidence that they were made in Italy in the late 1400's. The key to developing the first watch was the invention of the coiled spring, around 1450 AD, and other mechanical innovations followed which allowed watches to become more accurate. The first known pocket watch was invented in 1524 by Peter Henlein, who was a locksmith in Nuremburg.

Clocks and watches needed to be portable, because they were used to measure longitude while navigating. Unfortunately early clocks were not very accurate. They had hour hands only, because minute and second hands would not be accurate. This is part of the reason that early maps are not always accurate, because it was extremely hard to get a correct reading of longitude. Minute and second hands were not introduced until the 17th century. All watch parts were made by hand until the 1850's, and early watch parts were often heavy and covered in jewels and metal to protect their delicate workings.

An old watch. Image copyright Tony Karp, found at http://www.techno-impressionist.com/catalogs/show2/tk200057.htm

The origin of the wrist watch is an interesting story. The wrist watch was invented in the late 1800s by Patek Phillipe, but wrist watches were only worn by women and seen as a women's fashion item. Wrist watches became popular for men thanks to famous Brazilian inventor and aviation pioneer Alberto Santos-Dumont. Santos-Dumont was famous for racing hot air balloons and experimenting with early aviation in Paris. In 1904, Santos-Dumont complained to his friend Louis Cartier about his difficulty checking his pocketwatch to track his performance while manning the controls of his hot air balloon at the same time. Cartier developed a wrist watch for him, which Santos-Dumont always used while flying. Santos-Dumont's use of the watch helped it gain acceptance among men, and the Cartier name is still well-known as a maker of luxury watches.

World War I also proved to be quite valuable to wrist watches. Wrist watches can be used more quickly than pocket watches, which must of course be pulled out of some pocket for each use. The armies started providing their soldiers with wrist watches, since officers and artillery people needed to precisely coordinate their attacks and range shots. When the war was over, men were allowed to keep their wrist watches, which was a major event for bringing the wrist watch to the middle class and popularizing the watch in Western culture.

The electronic wrist watch was introduced in 1959 by the Hamilton Watch Company, which also jointly developed the first digital watch in 1970. As quartz and liquid crystal technology developed, it became possible to build sophisticated watches which do not have moving parts. Many watches today can run for years on a single battery and might lose a second at most over ten years. Ditigal watches have added functionality in some models, such as stop-watch capability, calculators, or even the ability to interface with computers. Other watch developments include the use of kinetic energy from the wearer's arm to power the watch, and the introduction of watches which communicate with atomic clocks via radio and are accurate up to a nanosecond.

Sources:

Encarta: http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761577936_1/Clocks_and_Watches.html
Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/w/watch.asp
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watch#Wrist_watch


For more on how watches work (Thanks to Wikipedia): http://www.fhs.ch/en/work.php

For more on watch history (through Encyclopedia.com)

C. Clutton and G. Daniels, Watches: A Complete History (3d ed. 1979)
J. Zagoory and H. Chan, A Time to Watch: The Wrist Watch as Art (1985)
E. Bruton, History of Clocks and Watches (1989).