A Short History of the Wristwatch

More than the centuries clocks have been utilised as a status symbol by these who put on them. Their precision, elegance and convenience are just some of the attributes that clocks and watches represent. Often they are purchased purely for their aesthetic looks. and at other times they are purchased due to the fact of their technical attributes like becoming precise to the final second or even millisecond. This is what makes clocks and watches so collectible and in some cases they can command high sums of cash.

Whether you gather the new high precision watches or ones that come from a past era, the fact is that over the years this hobby has grow to be a high turnover business. And collecting watches is in a lot of circles regarded as a wise form of investing.

At the begin of the last century the clocks that had been accessible for males or girls were firstly pocket clocks, and then clocks that held by a pendant attached to the advertiser lining of jackets or corsets. The advent of war, industrialization, and the improvement of the sport activities, brought more than new trends which extended to not only the way we dressed, but also how we carried our clocks.

It is mentioned that it was a nanny who invented wrist watches at about the end of the 19th century, who fixed a clock about her wrist by employing a silk band. The first watches to be created had been in reality smaller sized models of pocket clocks that were fitted with a leather strap. As soon as this item hit the market newer designs started to be created based around this exact same notion.

It was Louis Cartier who first produced the sort of watches we see nowadays via when he created a watch for a flying pioneer hero by the name Santos Dumont. By 1911 this very same sort of watch was on general sale. That identical type of watch became the blueprint of what wrist watches look like to this pebble watch review day.

Soon after the style of wrist "clocks" began to diversify away from the classical round shape that had been in vogue up until that time. From the Cartier classical wrist watch other tends to make of watch started to emerge which had been characterized by their shape. Movado is the best example of these new designs when it came out with the "Polyplan" shaped watch. Then came the famously and cryptically called "clock reference n. 1593" by Patek Philippe which was a rectangular shaped watch.

From 1913 onwards a lot more and far more watches started to be developed in all shapes and designs. From the "gondola" watch of Patek Phillipe to Louis Cartiers' "Tank" named thus since it was inspired by the shape of English armored automobiles of the time. These are watches which are extremely a lot sought after. There were other several watch makers like Audemars Piguet, Vacheron Constantin who along with Patek Philippe and Cartier came out with many other styles which added other attributes to the watches like lunar phases, month and day most of which are located in modern watches now.

Of course we could not mention wrist watches with out mentioning the most popular of them all: the Rolex watch. In the 1920s Rolex debuted in the planet of wrist watches with the sophisticated Rolex Prince and its revolutionary "dual time" function produced renowned for possessing the "seconds sector" bigger than that of the minutes. At the same time Jaeger Le Coultre developed an even more advanced piece known as the "Reverse", also very revolutionary in that it could be turn 180 degrees inside its situation, therefore safeguarding the crystal and dial. It became incredibly well-known and was only prevented from achieving even greater achievement by the recession of the 1930s and the advent of planet war 2.

These early watches of the 1910s to 1930s are what define all the tends to make of watches that we see and put on today. This short article has only scratched the surface of what is a very vast subject which has several a lot more watch makers with diverse and revolutionary designs. Even so it is makers like Rolex, Cartier, Jaeger Le Coultre and the other individuals talked about that are amongst the most beneficial and collectible, and really should you ever be so lucky to get one particular then make positive you hang on to it - preferably to your wrist.