Watch Out!

There is more than a little confusion about the history of watches.  More than one company claims it built the first pocket watch, the first wrist watch, and there is even more than one claimant for the distinction of being the first person to wear a wristwatch. 

This reminds me of the carefully crafted and massively funded old advertising campaign waged by Sony to convince the world that it had invented both the transistor and the compact disc.  The fact that this was nonsense, since Sony absolutely did not invent either, doesn’t matter anymore since about half the people who read that last sentance are asking, “What’s a transistor or a compact disc?”

While clocks date back to the 13th century, watches didn’t appear until the 16th century, and weren’t very common until the Calvinist Church in Switzerland banned the wearing of jewelry.  (“Look!  Someone is having fun!  Stone him!  Stone him!”)

Suddenly out of work, the Swiss jewelers switched to making watches, starting a national tradition of outstanding watchmaking that lasts to this day.  Though, even as I write this, I’’m sure Seiko is planning an ad campaign to prove it invented the watch.  (Actually, Seiko got its start importing Swiss watches to sell in Japan—but Seiko did invent the quartz watch.)

Watches have evolved frequently over the years, but usually because of fashion.  Because of their size, the first personal watches were worn as pendants, huge globular watches hanging on sturdy chains around the neck, but when Charles II introduced the waist coat, pocket watches became the new hit fashion trend.  Because watches at the time were just slightly smaller clocks, the pocket mandated a few changes:  watches slowly became flatter and with rounded edges to avoid snagging the sides of the cloth pocket. 

The beginning of the 17th century saw the addition of a minute hand and by the end of the century someone finally covered the face of the watch with a glass crystal to protect the delicate movement and the hands.  While there were more and better watches available, they were luxury items for the idle rich.

Over the next hundred years, watches saw a lot of technical improvements.  The second hand was added on a few, but didn’t become a standard until the 20th century.  The key necessary to wind a watch was replaced with a winding stem, then the self-winding watch was invented.  Slowly, watches became thinner, lighter, and made of better materials.  By the 19th century and the industrial revolution, watches were being mass produced bringing the cost down enough so that, for the first time, watches became the tools of the working class.

The growth of railroads not only spread the popularity of watches, but the need to run multiple trains on a single line necessitated accurate time pieces and an accepted universal time.  Sears got its start by selling watches to railroad men.  (And evidently, the railroads will be here long after Sears runs off the rails…)

You can pick your own favorite version of who wore the first watch.  One polite version has the Queen of Naples wearing a delicate little watch—about three inches across—on her wrist in 1812.  Another version says Brazilian aviator Alberto Santos-Dumont was in search of a watch that would allow him to keep both hands on the controls while timing flights.  He reached out to good friend Louis Cartier to come up with an alternative.  Cartier and his watchmaker Edmond Jaeger developed the Santos wristwatch, popularized by Santos-Dumont wearing it during his flights.

Both are good stories, but the truth is that neither is really correct.  First, special versions of pocket watches were made to be worn on the arm—literally called ‘arm watches—in the 18th century.  And though true wrist watches were available for women as early as 1812, these pieces were more decorative than functional.  Delicate little watches worn on the wrist were subject to accidental rough treatment, and rarely kept time.  This led to the infamous quote of Mark Twain, “Nothing is so ignorant as a man's left hand, except a lady's watch. The older we grow the greater becomes our wonder at how much ignorance one can contain without bursting one's clothes.”

Note.  I use that quote every time my wife, The Doc is late, and she usually hits me with her left hand.

It was the military that actually popularized the wrist watch.  By 1880, the German Navy was issuing them to officers, and by the First World War, every officer in all the armies was expected to own a waterproof watch with a luminous dial.  Further, since the officer was expected to purchase his own watch, every watch company advertised heavily in newspapers and magazines.  By the end of the war, more men were wearing wrist watches than pocket watches.

My father was a firm believer in wrist watches, and gave me the first of a long run of cheap Timex watches by the time I was eight.  (I think one of the reasons I was given a watch was that I was expected to be at the family car fifteen minutes after church ended if I wanted a ride home.)  About as fast as I received these watches, I usually cracked the crystal or tore the band off.  Eventually, I learned that if I wore my watch on the inside of my wrist, it suffered a little less damage.

I have been rather hard on watches over the years.  On one of the first dates with my future wife, I managed to have a watch ripped off my arm while skydiving.  I’ve always wondered how far underground that watch ended up.  With another watch, I discovered the term ‘waterproof’ was a relative marketing term that did not include scuba diving. 

In 1983, a close friend working at a jewelry store offered to sell me a really good watch at cost, and I bought a wonderful Seiko Quartz watch that was so accurate that it only lost about a minute a month.  I wore that watch everywhere, did everything with it, and literally beat the hell out of it.  I tore the band off first in a motor scooter crash, then, again while skiing, and then, a third time, during light construction.  Eventually, Seiko stopped making a metal band that fit the watch, and for a while it turned into a pocket watch.

One day, walking slowly down a sidewalk in Hong Kong (I was moving slowly because the same crash that tore the band off the watch had broken my ankle) I spotted a sign, “Seiko Repairs”.  That watch band wasn’t available in the states, but in Hong Kong, it took ten minutes and about as many dollars to secure a new one.

After thirty-seven years of wearing the same watch night and day…. the watch recently developed a few problems.  The light was so dim I couldn’t read the time at night, the Ping! of the alarm was too faint to hear (though my wife says that I’m too deaf), and it started losing several minutes a day.  Then it lost an hour a day.  Then, it stopped running unless I shook it.

The watch repair people said there was no hope of repair and that the watch was doomed.  Perhaps I should have made another trip to Hong Kong.  Then came the day when the minute hand just rotated freely, pointing to wherever gravity directed.  The watch was officially dead.

The Doc knew the kind of watch I wanted, and through a friend obtained a really nice new watch.  It’s a solar powered Citizen chronograph that’s waterproof to a depth that I’m unlikely to ever reach alive, and it has a super heavy band and a stop watch that works like magic.  And it keeps perfect time.

That was two months ago.  Since the day the new watch arrived, the old one has immediately started working again and has kept perfect time ever since.  The hands seem firmly attached and the old familiar watch seems to be in perfect order.  The Doc says that somewhere during the 37 years on my arm, it acquired some of the stubbornness of the owner.

So now, I have the dilemma.  Which watch do I wear?