What is The History of Watches?

The word watch originated from the Old English word “woecce” and it means “watchman.” In the old times, they were mainly used by the watchmen to keep a record of their shifts. However, there’s another theory which says the word came from the sailors of the 17th century. Watches have come a long way from being spring-driven to chip-powered computers which can now tell even our heartbeat.

Let’s look at the timeline of how watches have evolved.

Clock Watches

Early in the 15th century, portable watches had been developed. These clock-watches were the first timepieces to be worn as pendants, or as a chain around the neck. Peter Henlein by many accounts is considered the inventor of the watch. However, some dispute the idea.

They mainly came in the shape of a drum-shaped box, covered with pierced brass covering. They had only an hour hand and needed to be wound twice. Steel or iron was used for the movement, until the late mid-16th century when screws came into use. Towards the end of the century, there was a trend for differently shaped watches. Some were in the form of flowers, stars, animals, skulls, crosses, and insects.

However, these clock watches were highly inaccurate, being off by hours, they were seen as a novelty and jewelry by the rich. They were appreciated for their intriguing mechanism, unusual shapes, and their fine ornamentation.

Pocket watch

Come the 17th century, there came a change in style for wearing watches, especially for men. They began to wear them in pockets rather than pendants. However, this was more than just a new fashion statement. Watches at that time were prone to turn foul on exposure of the elements and the only way to keep them safe was to put them in pockets. To accommodate this new requirement of the times, the watches were reshaped into a round one and flattened to avoid any sharp corners. Around 1610, a glass covering for them was in use.

The timekeeping mechanism used here was of mainspring. However, there were still errors in showing time. The spring’s force was not constant and decreased as the spring unwound. All the timekeeping mechanisms present in the clock were disturbed due to this. The watches, as a result, slowed down in their running course.

To reduce the inaccuracies, efforts were made to even out the curve of steep torque of the mainspring. Fusee was a prominent device for this issue until the 19th century.

Introduction of Balance Spring: Watches Get Minute Hand

A great leap in watch time’s accuracy was made in 1657 as a balance spring was added to the balance wheel. This turned it into a harmonic oscillator. The watches now have disturbance resistant ‘beat.’ The inaccuracies fell down from being off by hours in a day to just about 10 minutes. Seeing the improvements, Britain and France added the minute hand to the watch in 1680 and 1700 respectively. There was also some boost in the watch production as Robert Hooke devised the tooth-cutting machine during the same time.

Some More Coarse Developments

To take care of the inaccuracies that crept in due to temperature change, bimetallic temperature compensated balance wheel was introduced. This came in 1765 and was invented by Pierre Le Roy and then further improved by Thomas Earnshaw.

Later in 1759, Thomas Mudge invented the lever escapement. It slowly established its hold in the watch market from the 1800s, though mostly in Britain. As developments were further brought about, by 1900s lever was being used in every watch made. The main benefit of using the lever was that it let the balance wheel completely swing for most of its cycle. So even if the jar stopped the balance wheel, it would start again.

In 1702, quality watches were being used in England as the jewel bearings got introduced. Watches now were no longer chunky. They were elegantly thin now. Innovations like lever escapements helped in doing away with their bulkiness. Pocket watches, which were once the accessory of rich, now only were found with the poor.

The strict requirements of the railroad system for an accurate time to schedule trains safely brought about further development and accuracy in watches. Around the late 19th century, balance wheels which were temperature-compensated came into wide use. Problems like positional errors and isochronism were dealt easily with the inventions by L. Lossier, M. Phillips, and Abraham-Louis Breguet. With these advances, watches were only off by a few seconds in a day by 1900s. Further progress was made in production methods, tolerances, and materials. In the 20th century, the watch’s mechanical design got standardized. Low-thermal-coefficient alloys elinvar and invar replaced the bimetallic temperature-compensated balance wheel due to their practically zero temperature dependence.

Mass Production

By 1861, Waltham Watch Company was running successfully. For the most of the 17th and 18th centuries, the British ruled the manufacturing of watch and mainly catered to the needs of the elite. The mass production kicked off in the USA with the application of duplicating machinery and tools. The American clock industry, together with some other companies in Naugatuck Valley of Connecticut, started producing clocks in millions. The Waterbury Clock Company was another organization that was taking care of mass production of clocks. It also invested in both imports and exports. Timex Group USA, Inc. is its successor and is still in operation.

The Wave of Wristwatches

Hans Wilsdorf along with his brother-in-law Alfred Davis set up Wilsdorf & Davis. The main aim of it was to provide quality timepieces at reasonable rates. The company now is known as Rolex. By the mid of the nineteenth century, watchmakers were producing wristwatches for women, and frequently pitched them as bracelets.

Electric Watch

During the 1950s came the electric watches. For timekeeping, they used a solenoid-powered balance wheel. However, the mechanism to move hands was still all mechanical.

Quartz Watch – A New Revolution

A Japanese holding company Seiko in 1959 ordered its daughter organization to start development of a quartz wristwatch. The world’s first quartz watch was Seiko 35 SQ Astron which came in the markets on December 25, 1969. It was then the most accurate watch in the entire globe. These watches used quartz crystal resonator (8,192 Hz) in place of a balance wheel and digital counters in place of the wheel train. The accuracy was far better than the mechanical watches, owing to the fact that quartz had a low-temperature coefficient and the resonator used had a higher Q value. The quartz watches were also more shock resistant as all the moving parts were eliminated. The accuracy reached to mere 12 seconds a year!

To increase the accuracy, the crystal needed to vibrate with more frequency. However, this increased power consumption. That was why the first generation of quartz watches was kept at low frequencies. The second generation used LCDs and CMOS logic to make for better battery life. The frequency was increased to about 32 KHz. By the 1980s, the mechanical watch industry was completely conquered by the quartz watches.

Atomic Wristwatch

Bathys Hawaii in 2013 introduced Cesium 133 Atomic Watch. This was the first one which was using an internal atomic clock for timekeeping. Having a small cesium atomic clock on a chip, it managed to have an accuracy of 1 sec in 1000 years. The chip was developed by US DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency). However, the chip was of the size of 1.5 inches and this shaped the wristwatches into a large rectangle.

Smartwatch

With the turn of the century, came new innovations. A smartwatch is a wrist watch that can do much more than telling time. These digital devices have the abilities of a personal digital assistant, a portable music player, or a cellphone. Linux developed the first smartwatch ever, developed by Steve Mann in 1998. It hit the shelves on 7 February 2000. Samsung launched the first watch phone, SPH-WP10 in 1999. IBM launched its first version of the wristwatch with a battery life of 6 hours. In the advanced versions, the life got extended to 12 hours. Microsoft launched the SPOT smartwatch in 2004. It could show information like sports scores, stocks, news, and weather through FM waves.

By 2010, some smartwatches were capable of running a number of mobile apps. In early 2015, Apple Inc. released the Apple Watch, the first smartwatch from the brand. Microsoft kept up and released Microsoft Band after its 2004 release SPOT. Later on, Apple Watch series 3 and Apple Watch Series 4 came which allowed messaging, phone calls, and data.

It is noted that by July 2013, HP, Nokia, HTC, Lenovo, Apple, Sony, Acer, Foxconn, BlackBerry, Google, Microsoft, LG, VESAG, Samsung, Toshiba, and Qualcomm were making smartwatches.

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