Watches, From The Pocket, To The Wrist, and Back Again
Watches, From The Pocket, To The Wrist, And Back Again.
The History of Watches began in the 16th century……blah blah blah
I told you I am not interested in the textbook answers to everything. Although the history of keeping time is fascinating, and I do recommend the Wikipedia article History of Watches, thats really not entirely what I am interested in. When I first started down the rabbit hole of watches and watch collecting the first question I asked my self was “What happened to pocket watches?” “Why did people go from carrying watches in their pockets to wearing them on their wrists?”
What happened to Pocket Watches?
After doing some digging, the consensus from most historians as to why men in particular stopped carrying pocket watches, and switched to wristwatches is World War 1. Although in Europe it might have become a military trend in the 1880’s, still the evolution of warfare necessitated the change in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. With the preceding wars the utility of knowing the time was not necessary for low infantrymen. Troop movements were dictated by officers and they wore pocket watches to keep time and coordinate troops. Frankly the thought of wearing a watch on the wrist was a very feminine idea. Women wore wrist watches and before WW1 men just didn’t wear them. Due to the trench warfare of WW1 and new forms of weapons i.e artillery and chemical, even the common infantry man needed to know the time. Their life and the life of their comrades depended on them being in the right place at the right time. A pocket watch just wasn’t practical for the trenches. The obvious problem is that they had a tendency to fall out of the pocket.
This is a concise explanation of why wristwatches were a necessity during WW1. If you are interested in diving deeper and have more questions check this website out. Its a fantastic resource that discusses EVERYTHING about watches during WW1. http://www.vintagewatchstraps.com/trenchwatches.php
After WW1 men just continued to wear their watches on the wrist, the idea of wristwatches being “feminine” was completely gone. For the rest of the 20th century, the watch remained firmly on the wrist and a vital tool for all.
As I said earlier the history of watches is fascinating. However its HUNDREDS of years, and the “interesting” history of watches and trends are told by the individual brands. The histories of Omega, Rolex, Patek Phillipe, etc. are all where the juiciest bits are, and I will be going through some of them through out the week. There are only two more pivotal moments that peaked my interest in the 20th and 21st centuries. The first is the “Quartz Crisis”
The Quartz Crisis
This is a rather significant time in the history of watches. Particularly for the watch collecting community. Even though the first battery operated electric watches were invented in the late 1950’s they weren’t “luxurious” and they were quite bulky. They weren’t even utilitarian because they were quite expensive and experimental. It would take almost 20 years for them to catch on, but when they did they REALLY caught on.
A Quartz watch is just a fancy way of saying battery powered watch. Watches up until the 1950’s were powered mechanically using springs and gears. (If you’re interested more in what a Quartz watch is see here. Trust me a Quartz movement is much more complicated than "battery powered") It took hundreds of hours to make even the most simple and cheap mechanical watches, and they still weren’t cheap. Often costing weeks, if not months salary. Watches were often passed down through generations as a tool necessary for life. This all changed when cheap Quartz time pieces started flooding the market in the mid 1970’s. Watches were now extremely affordable. Not only that but they became fashionable due to the incredible marketing campaigns of Seiko, Swatch, Casio, Armitron, and Timex. The high end companies were forced to adapt or die. Companies like Omega that have been around since 1848 almost folded if not for the fact they started making quartz movement watches to feed the new market. Other companies like Elgin, Smiths, Unviversal Geneve and others did not create quartz movement watches and either died completely or were bought by other companies and turned into quartz brands. Companies like Rolex and Patek Phillipe survived because their brands were and are synonymous with luxury. However if you look back they didn’t go through the “quartz crisis” completely unscathed. Over time a balance came back. Smaller companies adapted and offered both mechanical and quartz movements and the luxury brands mainly stuck with mechanical, making the idea of mechanical movements now something exclusive and elite and quartz movements for the “common man”.
Cellphones, back to the pocket.
Well its now 2019 and as of right now the pendulum could swing either way for watches. I am coining the phrase LED/LCD crisis. I haven’t heard it referred to as that and I can’t find anything calling the current time we live in the LED/LCD crisis. So I claim it, its mine. Currently people don’t look at watches as tools anymore. For the most part people wear watches as an accessory to complete an outfit or just simply as a fashion statement. I have seen people on the streets and on public transportation look at their phones for the time and THEY ARE WEARING A WATCH! As a watch lover its a very sad time in my opinion. Fewer and fewer people are appreciating watches as tools, as well as the craftsmanship that goes into them and more people are embracing cellphones as “timepieces”. In 2019 everyone essentially is carrying a pocket watch. However it does seem that the pocket watch phase is ending yet again and the trend of “fitness watches” and the “smart watch” are bringing telling time back to the wrist. It turns out the utility of telling time on your wrist is just more practical. However these time pieces are lcd and led screens that do a lot more than just tell time. Not quartz movement and certainly not mechanical. Its very likely that since the price of “fitness watches” and “smart watches” are continuing to drop we will see a real LED/LCD crisis (remember you heard it here) similar to the quartz crisis back in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Only time will tell what happens next.
