The Art of Measuring Time

 

The history of the watch begins with the history of time. The history of time is covered in the study of horology: the art or science of measuring time or of making timepieces. An expert in horology is called a horologist and the fear of time or deadlines is horophobia. Okay, that one isn’t real, but it seems plausible.

 

Wherever they find evidence of societies, no matter how primitive, they find evidence of how members of those civilizations kept track of time; some used sticks with notches others used huge stones set by the movement of the stars. For ancient and prehistoric civilizations it wasn’t necessary to know the hours and minutes, but days and seasons were important, or so it seems by the evidence left behind.

 

As time progressed, so did the need for more exact measurement of that time. The first clocks didn’t have dials or hands; they chimed on a regular basis to signify it was time for church services or meals. As a matter of fact, the name “clock” is derived from the Middle Dutch word for bell, “klocke.”   Of course, there were the silent timekeepers such as sundials and hourglasses. Water clocks were used in ancient Egypt and then in Greece. At least one type of water clock was being utilized as late as the 20^th century.

 

The one thing in common with all clocks is that they all need motion. This does not include the earliest methods of keeping time: Stonehenge is not a clock. Early clocks used a mechanism called a verge and foliot beam, mechanisms which were much too heavy and large to make portable. At or around 1300 the clocks had no faces or hands or even a dial, but were set to chime at selected intervals. Around 1455-1488 spring-driven clocks are though to have been invented. The earliest surviving model is dated 1525.

 

Around 1500, then, is when clocks could be made small enough to be portable. A dumb bell shaped arm that was set on a center pivot or a spoked balance wheel replaced the foliot. Although no one can pinpoint the precise date the watch was invented, most horologists think the first one was crafted by Peter Henlein of Nuremburg. Dates vary, but somewhere in the early 1500’s, perhaps as early as 1510, but probably closer to the later date of 1524. Henlein is credited with the development of spring-powered clocks. Although inaccurate, they were much lighter than mechanical clocks built prior to their invention and the convenience of portability outweighed the importance of accuracy. The earliest existing model has the date “1548” with the initials of the artist who created it: Casper Werner, also of Nuremburg. It had Roman numerals and Arabic numerals on the dial and only an hour hand. The inaccuracies of the spring mechanism rendered a minute hand useless.

 

Many of the early watches were “neck watches” as opposed to wristwatches, they were expensive and showy and the owners wore them as fashion accessories. A portrait of Henry the Eighth shows him wearing a watch on a chain. Elizabeth the First is said to have worn a ring watch that had a metal sliver that would scratch her as an alarm device.   Watch making as a profession sprang from the roots of jewelry making, with its members starting out as apprentices to masters in the guild.

Wristwatches came later. Historians seem to think they were invented as fashion accessories, too, jeweled and yet functional bracelets for the upper class. An existing example of this is a wristwatch once owned by Napoleon’s Josephine; it was created in 1806 by a Parisian jeweler and was encrusted with emeralds and pearls. It was almost a hundred years later that wristwatches became popular, and even then it was still women who were wearing them.

 

It was the military that brought wristwatches to the forefront for men. Pocket watches were much more popular until the late 1800’s, early 1900’s. Pocket watches were an affectation of the upper and middle classes; working class men wore the plainer, unadorned wristwatch. It was also in 1880 that the German forces ordered wristwatches for their artillery officers. The convenience of the wrist model over the pocket watch made it the timepiece of choice for most of the military during World War I. As military maneuvers became more refined and depended on accuracy and coordinated timing, watches became more vital to the war effort.

 

Aviators were great proponents of the wristwatch.  Santos-Dumont, an aviator, was a friend of the watchmaker Louis Cartier and he collaborated with his friend to invent a perfect watch for flying. Cartier created the “Santos” watch in 1904, and it is thought to be the first man’s wristwatch. In 1950 Rolex and Pan Am Airlines got together and created the “Pilot’s Watch.” It showed the time in three different time zones: the time as set on the standard hands, Greenwich Mean Time and one other time zone. This was accomplished by the addition of a hand that rotated every 24 hours and a rotating bezel.

 

All analog watches have three main components. The first is the movement, a mechanism that measures and displays the current time. They may be mechanical or electronic or a hybrid. One example of an electromechanical movement is the tuning-fork movement. It results in a watch that hums rather than ticks. The second hand on these type watches have a continuous flowing motion rather than the stop-start motion of other movements.

 

The second component is the dial and hands. These are the parts that display the time. These parts range from the purely functional simple black face, clear white numbers of the watch called the A-11, number one choice of US Airmen in WWII, to the highly adorned enameled faces of the watches worn by the upper class ladies in the past. In between, we find a variety that ranges from the museum piece Movado face to multiple dials of diving watches and complicated chronometers.

 

Finally, there is the case. This is comprised of a middle, bezel, glass and back and is primarily for protecting the movement and the dial and hands. Along with the face, the case is what gives a watch its “look.”

 

Digital watches were introduced in 1970. The Hamilton Watch Company and a company called Electro-data introduced the “Pulsar” which had a red LED display, was 18-carat gold and sold for the sum of $2,100! In 1973 Seiko introduced a 6-digit LCD display, which allowed for a display that was always visible as opposed to having to push a button to see the time, an inconvenience of the LED display. Digital watches were really a novelty, an expensive one, at that, until 1975, when Texas Instruments started mass production of a twenty-dollar model, eventually sending Pulsar back to building analogue quartz versions. In the 1980’s digital watch technology soared and saw the advent of calculator watches, television displays and thermometers. High tech innovations since then include versions that can download data to computers, call your home phone and take your voice commands. Not ever fully realized are the Dick Tracy communication models, but if cell phones shrink down to strappable sizes, well, you never know.

 

Keeping track of time is as normal a part of daily life as eating or drinking. And even as younger generations look to their cellphones or PDA’s to check the time, their parents and grandparents still give them watches and clocks on momentous occasions such as graduations, birthdays and weddings. Watches are going back to their roots as a symbol of status as opposed to that of  purely functional timepieces.

Carmine Sacco is a Consultant for the E-Shop  http://www.watches4all.biz