What is a wristwatch? With a nice-looking little clock face and metal links or a band made of leather, a watch is both a trendy accent and a convenient means of guaranteeing punctuality and timekeeping.
As jewelry works, the wristwatch is by far the utmost practical piece that any person can own and relish. Let’s travel back in time as we discover the evolution of timepieces, all the way from its early roots as a pocket watch to today’s state-of-the-art smartwatches.
The Invention of the Watch (Early 16th Century)
The earliest watches did not just tell us the time. Like the smartest and most modern timepieces today, watches back then also had numerous functions. The first one that was wearable is typically denoted as the Nuremberg egg by Germany watchmaker Peter Henlein.
First Pocket Watch (17th Century)
Variations in men’s fashion popularized the pocket watches. This became possible when clockmakers started covering the watch’s face with a glass. Even though Peter Heinlein is the man renowned for being the creator of the pocket watch, it was Leonardo Da Vinci that built or drafted what is branded as a Fusee, a pulley system that has aided pocket watches to keep better time.
The Era of Pendulum Clocks (17th-19th Centuries)
While Galileo premeditated the idea of pendulum clocks in 1602, the original patent for these timepieces was by Christian Huygens more than half a century later. With the discovery of pendulum, time deviation in clocks was lessened to about 15 seconds from the prior 15 minutes.
Pocket Watches Move to Our Wrist (Early 20th Century)
Nobody knows precisely when the first individual who strapped a watch to their wrist, but people started to do so more extensively in the early 20th Century.
A Lady’s Fashion Accent
The beginning of wristwatches dates to as early as the 16th Century. However, from that time up until the early 20th Century, wrist watches (also branded as bracelet watches), were worn and promoted for exclusively by women. Like fedoras, wrist watches also started as a lady’s fashion accents.
War and Watches
Men lastly felt that they could wear wristwatches when World War I began. Military strategies started including timed drills, while wristwatches were being more practical to have.
Electronic Watches are Born (the 1950s)
Automatic reliability was a total game-changer for science, ultimately dropping down to wristwatches by 1957. The first electronic watches utilized humming tuning forks driven by a battery. Later, forked quartz crystal-based electronic watches further improved battery life and precision.
Quartz Watches Strike (the 1960s)
The first quartz movement-based wristwatches were both striking and enormously expensive. The landed Swiss watchmaking elite was separated on the electronic revolution’s home in the future of timepieces and ended up being an unruly force that nearly toppled the mechanical watch trade. By the early 1980s, low-cost quartz watches were all the anger.
Digital Watches Came Out (the 1970s)
The Hamilton Watch Company came out with the first digital watch. As if the miracles of a digital watch display weren’t cool enough, for the 1970s, the company also decided to cover the watch in 18-carat gold.
Connected Watch is Born (the 1990s)
Popular culture has envisioned smart connected devices worn on our wrist since the early twentieth century. Though, it’s not until the mobile phone age, when connected watches were available. Using radio signals, the innovative SPOT watches could provide things like weather, news, sports scores, and stock prices for a reasonable price.
Connected Watch is Reborn (2010)
A new age of watchmaking has begun. Communication pathways such as Bluetooth and WiFi created the renowned smartwatch possible, offering live data and notifications conventional to its users’ wrists.
Still vulnerable by software solutions and battery life, smartwatches must nonetheless verify a revitalizing power for the humble watch to an era that has, until now, vanished the need to wear a watch.
The Future of Watches
Today, various watchmaking businesses are experimenting with materials like silicon, ceramic, carbon fiber, and even titanium for better performance and watch movements. With more improvement in technology going on, the timepieces of the future like the Omega Constellation might be bizarre from the devices accessible today.
Takeaway
Individuals have been wearing various timepieces for many years now and will perhaps continue to do so in future generations. Wearing a wristwatch can be for practical uses and chic and stylish ones. Like all other discoveries, watches have a fascinating history from the time they were made for the pockets until they moved to our wrists.
Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash