History of clocks and watches
Guest blogger Marcus Besley has written us this thorough (and I mean thorough) guide to the history of watches and clocks, covering everything from Ancient Egyptians telling the time by staring at sticks through to hipsters telling the time by staring at their iPhone X.
My goodness, we've come a long way.
Our usual rules about being jargon-free have gone out the window somewhat, but if you're interested in this sort of thing then you'll love it.
My goodness, we've come a long way.
Our usual rules about being jargon-free have gone out the window somewhat, but if you're interested in this sort of thing then you'll love it.
Part 1: Pre-mechanical clocks
As we know from objects like Stonehenge, prehistoric societies were already taking an interest in time and calendars. But without written records, the birth of timekeeping is shrouded in mystery.
The two earliest types of clock were primitive sundials, known as shadow sticks, and water clocks, also called clepsydras. Both are known in Ancient Egypt from around 1500 BC, but they were probably used by other civilisations even earlier.
Of the two, sundials were more accurate. In fact, a modern sundial that has been well designed and installed can be accurate to the minute. But their disadvantages are obvious: they don’t work inside, at night, or when it’s cloudy.
Water clocks are based on water flowing through a small hole from one vessel to another, with one of those having markers to show the intervals elapsed. They could be calibrated from sundials. Although they work when and where sundials don’t, they have two problems. One is that the water pressure diminishes as the reservoir empties, slowing the flow. The other is that water becomes more viscous (treacly) when cooler, and can freeze completely.
The water pressure problem was solved by the Ancient Greeks, by making the reservoir an inverted cone shape, which with evenly spaced marks compensates for the diminishing pressure. The temperature problem was solved by the Chinese in medieval times, by replacing the water with liquid mercury, which has a lower freezing point. A standard water clock is accurate to about 15 minutes per day, but the best Chinese ones were accurate to 30 seconds per day.
The hourglass, or clepsammia, was invented around 150 BC or possibly before. It is the water clock idea but with sand, which doesn’t have the same problems with temperature and pressure. They vanished for a time, but became popular in the late Middle Ages, before being superseded by mechanical clocks. The two bulbs weren’t made from a single piece of glass until 1760. Unlike water clocks, which are today very rare, hourglasses are still sometimes used as timers, especially in the kitchen.
The other type of early clock was the candle clock. This involves one or more candles with markings to show how far they’ve burnt, sometimes with pins inserted that clatter out onto a tray. King Alfred the Great used a candle clock, as did some Persian scholars.
Both Greek and Chinese inventors built clocks that were powered by water but had mechanisms, some with gears, which showed the time on a dial or via automata.
Some water clocks also incorporated the earliest form of striking, which is called the passing strike. This sounds a single bell on the hour, by attaching a cam to a shaft that rotates once per hour, thereby gradually lifting a hammer and then suddenly letting it fall.
The two earliest types of clock were primitive sundials, known as shadow sticks, and water clocks, also called clepsydras. Both are known in Ancient Egypt from around 1500 BC, but they were probably used by other civilisations even earlier.
Of the two, sundials were more accurate. In fact, a modern sundial that has been well designed and installed can be accurate to the minute. But their disadvantages are obvious: they don’t work inside, at night, or when it’s cloudy.
Water clocks are based on water flowing through a small hole from one vessel to another, with one of those having markers to show the intervals elapsed. They could be calibrated from sundials. Although they work when and where sundials don’t, they have two problems. One is that the water pressure diminishes as the reservoir empties, slowing the flow. The other is that water becomes more viscous (treacly) when cooler, and can freeze completely.
The water pressure problem was solved by the Ancient Greeks, by making the reservoir an inverted cone shape, which with evenly spaced marks compensates for the diminishing pressure. The temperature problem was solved by the Chinese in medieval times, by replacing the water with liquid mercury, which has a lower freezing point. A standard water clock is accurate to about 15 minutes per day, but the best Chinese ones were accurate to 30 seconds per day.
The hourglass, or clepsammia, was invented around 150 BC or possibly before. It is the water clock idea but with sand, which doesn’t have the same problems with temperature and pressure. They vanished for a time, but became popular in the late Middle Ages, before being superseded by mechanical clocks. The two bulbs weren’t made from a single piece of glass until 1760. Unlike water clocks, which are today very rare, hourglasses are still sometimes used as timers, especially in the kitchen.
The other type of early clock was the candle clock. This involves one or more candles with markings to show how far they’ve burnt, sometimes with pins inserted that clatter out onto a tray. King Alfred the Great used a candle clock, as did some Persian scholars.
Both Greek and Chinese inventors built clocks that were powered by water but had mechanisms, some with gears, which showed the time on a dial or via automata.
Some water clocks also incorporated the earliest form of striking, which is called the passing strike. This sounds a single bell on the hour, by attaching a cam to a shaft that rotates once per hour, thereby gradually lifting a hammer and then suddenly letting it fall.
Part 2: Primitive mechanical clocks
Salisbury Cathedral, home of an early mechanical clock
The first truly mechanical clocks were built by monks in the 1200s and 1300s. We don’t know who exactly invented them and why, because they weren’t initially recognised as the revolutionary step forward that they are. A few survive, including the one at Salisbury Cathedral, which has no dial but strikes the hours. However, all of them have been substantially altered, and some, including Salisbury’s, are questionable as to whether they really are the thing mentioned in medieval records or are a later copy.
All mechanical clocks and watches operate on the same basic principles. There is a kinetic power source, either a weight or a spring. This turns an axle that operates the hands, which are on a train of differential gears, scaling down from seconds to minutes to hours. To prevent all the energy being released at once, there is an escapement. This links a cog on the main axle to something that oscillates, holding the axle still for much of its path of motion but allowing it to advance a little with each beat.
The contact as the escapement stops the wheel is what makes the “tick-tock” sound of a mechanical clock or watch. The clever bit is that said small release of energy both advances the hands and nudges the oscillator, replacing the energy lost to friction. So the mechanism will continue to beat until its power source is fully unwound. Or in theory it will: the gearing means it needs a fair amount of constant force, so if that drops for any reason it may stop.
These early clocks used a verge and foliot escapement. There is a crown-shaped wheel attached to the axle, with the verge being a rod with two small pallets set at right angles, connecting to the wheel top and bottom. This means that as the wheel advances, the verge rod is pushed first one way then the other. The foliot is a beam attached to the top of the verge rod, with weights at each end. This spins back and forth, slowing the motion of the rod enough to make it practical for timekeeping. The clock can be calibrated by moving the weights on the foliot.
It is uncertain how accurate these clocks were, but they probably achieved about the same 15 minutes per day as a water clock, without the freezing in winter issue. The problem with the verge and foliot is that it’s a high-friction, juddering movement, making it inherently inaccurate and inefficient, and prone to its components wearing down.
As with the Salisbury one, many of these clocks had mechanisms for striking the correct number of hours. They used a system called count wheel striking, which is based on a cog with notches at increasing intervals around the rim. When the timekeeping train reaches the correct point, it lifts up the striking train. The count wheel gears a pin wheel, which has pins at equal intervals around it that lift up and release the hammer, striking repeatedly until the train falls back into the next notch of the count wheel.
A striking mechanism requires a power source and a gear train, which may be near identical to those of the timekeeping mechanism, and also a regulator – usually a piece of metal that whirrs around, using air resistance to slow the release of power. The problem with count wheel striking is that said wheel can easily get out of sync with the timekeeping train, e.g. if the striking train runs out of power – and then require manual re-setting.
The balance wheel appeared shortly after the foliot, more in southern Europe while the foliot dominated in the north. This is really just an improved version of the foliot, being a wheel with weights on the rim. Because proportionally more of the weight is further from the centre, it has a greater moment of inertia than a foliot, i.e. is harder to turn, and so is more effective than a foliot of the same size.
In the 15th century, clocks began to be used in secular buildings. They also got smaller, which was partly enabled by the invention of the mainspring, as a more compact power source than weights. The mainspring is a long strip of metal, of a type of steel or alloy that returns easily to its original shape. So when you coil it up, it unwinds, releasing energy. The idea came from the springs used in locks: many early clockmakers were also locksmiths.
All mechanical clocks and watches operate on the same basic principles. There is a kinetic power source, either a weight or a spring. This turns an axle that operates the hands, which are on a train of differential gears, scaling down from seconds to minutes to hours. To prevent all the energy being released at once, there is an escapement. This links a cog on the main axle to something that oscillates, holding the axle still for much of its path of motion but allowing it to advance a little with each beat.
The contact as the escapement stops the wheel is what makes the “tick-tock” sound of a mechanical clock or watch. The clever bit is that said small release of energy both advances the hands and nudges the oscillator, replacing the energy lost to friction. So the mechanism will continue to beat until its power source is fully unwound. Or in theory it will: the gearing means it needs a fair amount of constant force, so if that drops for any reason it may stop.
These early clocks used a verge and foliot escapement. There is a crown-shaped wheel attached to the axle, with the verge being a rod with two small pallets set at right angles, connecting to the wheel top and bottom. This means that as the wheel advances, the verge rod is pushed first one way then the other. The foliot is a beam attached to the top of the verge rod, with weights at each end. This spins back and forth, slowing the motion of the rod enough to make it practical for timekeeping. The clock can be calibrated by moving the weights on the foliot.
It is uncertain how accurate these clocks were, but they probably achieved about the same 15 minutes per day as a water clock, without the freezing in winter issue. The problem with the verge and foliot is that it’s a high-friction, juddering movement, making it inherently inaccurate and inefficient, and prone to its components wearing down.
As with the Salisbury one, many of these clocks had mechanisms for striking the correct number of hours. They used a system called count wheel striking, which is based on a cog with notches at increasing intervals around the rim. When the timekeeping train reaches the correct point, it lifts up the striking train. The count wheel gears a pin wheel, which has pins at equal intervals around it that lift up and release the hammer, striking repeatedly until the train falls back into the next notch of the count wheel.
A striking mechanism requires a power source and a gear train, which may be near identical to those of the timekeeping mechanism, and also a regulator – usually a piece of metal that whirrs around, using air resistance to slow the release of power. The problem with count wheel striking is that said wheel can easily get out of sync with the timekeeping train, e.g. if the striking train runs out of power – and then require manual re-setting.
The balance wheel appeared shortly after the foliot, more in southern Europe while the foliot dominated in the north. This is really just an improved version of the foliot, being a wheel with weights on the rim. Because proportionally more of the weight is further from the centre, it has a greater moment of inertia than a foliot, i.e. is harder to turn, and so is more effective than a foliot of the same size.
In the 15th century, clocks began to be used in secular buildings. They also got smaller, which was partly enabled by the invention of the mainspring, as a more compact power source than weights. The mainspring is a long strip of metal, of a type of steel or alloy that returns easily to its original shape. So when you coil it up, it unwinds, releasing energy. The idea came from the springs used in locks: many early clockmakers were also locksmiths.
Part 3: Primitive watches
In the early 1500s, the first things that could be called watches appeared. They were made in Nuremberg and Augsburg, and were sometimes called Nuremberg Eggs. These were small drums with mainsprings and verge and foliot escapements, essentially halfway between a clock and a real watch. They could be worn as pendants, or even on the wrist. Peter Henlein is the best-known maker of these watches, but probably didn’t invent them. Elizabeth I was later given one by Robert Dudley, it being described as an “arm watch”.
The problem with mainsprings is similar to the pressure issue with water clocks: as the spring winds down, its power output reduces. This was particularly bad news with the verge escapement, in which there is almost constant contact between the parts, and reliance on force pressing in both directions to stop and start it. So these earliest watches, which only had an hour hand anyway, were inaccurate by several hours per day, making them useless as anything but ornaments.
Two attempts were made to even out the torque of the mainspring. The first was a spring-loaded cam called a stackfreed. This added a large amount of friction, so was soon abandoned. The second was the fusée, which worked much better. This was a cone-shaped pulley – a similar solution to that found for water clocks.
The problem with mainsprings is similar to the pressure issue with water clocks: as the spring winds down, its power output reduces. This was particularly bad news with the verge escapement, in which there is almost constant contact between the parts, and reliance on force pressing in both directions to stop and start it. So these earliest watches, which only had an hour hand anyway, were inaccurate by several hours per day, making them useless as anything but ornaments.
Two attempts were made to even out the torque of the mainspring. The first was a spring-loaded cam called a stackfreed. This added a large amount of friction, so was soon abandoned. The second was the fusée, which worked much better. This was a cone-shaped pulley – a similar solution to that found for water clocks.
Part 4: Lantern clocks
The earliest clocks to appear widely in private homes were lantern clocks. They originated around 1500, but only became common after 1600. An original lantern clock has a balance wheel and two weights – one for going and one for striking. They were designed to be fixed on a wall, as high as possible to maximise the drop of weights, though they would generally still need winding at least twice a day. They are made almost entirely of brass, and have a square case. They have only one hand. Very few lantern clocks actually survive in original condition: most have had conversions.
Part 5: Pendulum clocks
Precision timekeeping began in the mid-17th century, the era of Isaac Newton and the founding of The Royal Society. Galileo, at the start of the century, discovered something very important about pendulums: a property called isochronism. The only factors that affect the period of a pendulum’s swing are its length and local gravity. Its weight doesn’t matter, its width of swing doesn’t matter – because with a wider swing, gravity accelerates it back faster. Galileo started to design a pendulum clock, which his son began to assemble, but neither lived to complete it. Instead it was the Dutch inventor Christiaan Huygens who made and patented the first pendulum clock, in 1656.
Many lantern clocks then had their balance wheels replaced with pendulums. Some had wings added to the sides, to contain the swing of the short pendulum.
However, with further experimentation over the coming years, Huygens realised that a wide-swinging pendulum, which was necessary with a verge escapement, didn’t have full isochronism. So to change to more accurate narrow-swinging pendulums needed a change to the anchor escapement. This had probably been invented by Robert Hooke around 1656, and has an anchor-like piece on top of the pendulum, which catches on the drive wheel at each extreme of swing.
With the narrow angle you could also make the pendulum much longer, so it would run slower, losing less energy to friction and reducing the wear on the parts. Pendulums with a period of 1 second exactly, which are just under a metre long, were introduced by William Clement and became the standard.
Many lantern clocks then had their balance wheels replaced with pendulums. Some had wings added to the sides, to contain the swing of the short pendulum.
However, with further experimentation over the coming years, Huygens realised that a wide-swinging pendulum, which was necessary with a verge escapement, didn’t have full isochronism. So to change to more accurate narrow-swinging pendulums needed a change to the anchor escapement. This had probably been invented by Robert Hooke around 1656, and has an anchor-like piece on top of the pendulum, which catches on the drive wheel at each extreme of swing.
With the narrow angle you could also make the pendulum much longer, so it would run slower, losing less energy to friction and reducing the wear on the parts. Pendulums with a period of 1 second exactly, which are just under a metre long, were introduced by William Clement and became the standard.
Part 6: Longcase clocks
The obvious next move was to put all that gubbins inside a wooden case. By the 1670s, these clocks had evolved to be recognisably what we call longcase clocks, also known as grandfather clocks or (in the USA) tallcase clocks.
That last quarter of the seventeenth century is known as the Golden Age of English Clockmaking, and the most valuable longcases today all come from this period. In descending order, the top three makers are generally held to be Thomas Tompion, Daniel Quare, and Joseph Knibb.
The first longcases had 30-hour (wind once a day) movements and plain oak cases, but these top makers, who were often working for royal customers, rapidly developed much more elaborate movements and cases. They found it relatively easy to extend the movement to 8-day (wind once a week). They then managed to build clocks that would go for a month and then even a year, essentially by having a phenomenally heavy weight, using pulleys to maximise its distance of travel, and making all the components as precise and low-friction as possible.
An average longcase clock is accurate to about ten seconds per day (one minute per week), the very best ones maybe one second per day. Until quartz clocks were developed, around 1930, they were the most accurate timekeepers that humanity had.
The step change in accuracy meant that around 1690, minute hands were added to longcase clocks. The top makers also added seconds dials and date wheels, and in some cases even astronomical dials.
Another big innovation of this period was rack and snail striking, sometimes just called rack striking, which was developed around 1675. This is not massively different from count wheel striking, but instead of a notched wheel it has a snail-shaped cam, which is attached to the timekeeping train and so moves independently of the striking mechanism. The rack is lifted and then falls onto the cam, the higher hours being the inner parts of the spiral, giving it greater distance to fall and so rotating the pin wheel more times. It’s a slightly more complicated mechanism than the count wheel, but the big advantage is that it should never get out of sync with the timekeeping train.
Rack striking also enabled the repeater mechanism. This is thought to have been invented by the Reverend Edward Barlow in 1676. It is essentially a manual control added to the striking train, so when you pull a cord it will repeat the last hour. Later versions would also do quarters, or even minutes. Particularly when combined with a strike/silent lever, that meant you could have a clock near your bed, then check the time during the night without having to light candles.
Longcase clocks were made for 200 years, fizzling out around 1880, when the market was taken over by mass-produced mantel and wall clocks imported from Germany and America. After that, the only longcases produced were special, custom-made ones, which had sophisticated mechanisms but whose cases were only copies of old styles. Some longcases were made in Continental Europe and the USA, but they are mostly associated with the British Isles.
After the Golden Age, the basic technology didn’t really change at all. But longcases became democratised: the top London makers moved on to other types of clock, but many, many provincial makers, a lot of them moonlighting between other jobs, produced longcases for middle-class houses and country cottages. These were still not cheap, and would often be the most expensive thing in the house.
There was one big style change in 200 years. Early longcase clocks all have brass dials. But around 1770, in Birmingham, they began to make clocks with white, painted dials. These were cheaper, allowed more customisation, and were easier to read in low light, so they rapidly took over from brass dials completely. The earliest painted dials had only a small amount of decoration, but the painting became more and more extensive over time. There were some other evolutions that can help date a clock: seconds dials and date wheels, initially only seen on the very best clocks, became standard, while weights changed from lead to cast iron (matching the dial shift).
Every longcase is unique: in the later period there was greater mass-production of movements, but dials and cases were always individual. Provincial, painted-dial clocks used to be less valuable than London or brass-dial ones, but the difference has evened out, as people like a clock with local interest.
Later clocks are nearly always either 30-hour or 8-day. The 30-hour ones have a single weight that is hauled up on a rope or chain, while 8-day ones have two weights on pulleys, with two holes in the dial and a winding tool. (Though occasionally 30-hour clocks would have fake winding holes, to make them look more expensive.) 30-hour clocks usually have the cheaper count wheel striking, while 8-day clocks almost always have rack striking. All other factors being equal, 8-day clocks are always more desirable, but an attractive 30-hour clock will be worth more than a hugely oversized 8-day one, which won’t fit a modern home. Moon phase dials and automata, which became common from the mid-18th century, always command a premium.
That last quarter of the seventeenth century is known as the Golden Age of English Clockmaking, and the most valuable longcases today all come from this period. In descending order, the top three makers are generally held to be Thomas Tompion, Daniel Quare, and Joseph Knibb.
The first longcases had 30-hour (wind once a day) movements and plain oak cases, but these top makers, who were often working for royal customers, rapidly developed much more elaborate movements and cases. They found it relatively easy to extend the movement to 8-day (wind once a week). They then managed to build clocks that would go for a month and then even a year, essentially by having a phenomenally heavy weight, using pulleys to maximise its distance of travel, and making all the components as precise and low-friction as possible.
An average longcase clock is accurate to about ten seconds per day (one minute per week), the very best ones maybe one second per day. Until quartz clocks were developed, around 1930, they were the most accurate timekeepers that humanity had.
The step change in accuracy meant that around 1690, minute hands were added to longcase clocks. The top makers also added seconds dials and date wheels, and in some cases even astronomical dials.
Another big innovation of this period was rack and snail striking, sometimes just called rack striking, which was developed around 1675. This is not massively different from count wheel striking, but instead of a notched wheel it has a snail-shaped cam, which is attached to the timekeeping train and so moves independently of the striking mechanism. The rack is lifted and then falls onto the cam, the higher hours being the inner parts of the spiral, giving it greater distance to fall and so rotating the pin wheel more times. It’s a slightly more complicated mechanism than the count wheel, but the big advantage is that it should never get out of sync with the timekeeping train.
Rack striking also enabled the repeater mechanism. This is thought to have been invented by the Reverend Edward Barlow in 1676. It is essentially a manual control added to the striking train, so when you pull a cord it will repeat the last hour. Later versions would also do quarters, or even minutes. Particularly when combined with a strike/silent lever, that meant you could have a clock near your bed, then check the time during the night without having to light candles.
Longcase clocks were made for 200 years, fizzling out around 1880, when the market was taken over by mass-produced mantel and wall clocks imported from Germany and America. After that, the only longcases produced were special, custom-made ones, which had sophisticated mechanisms but whose cases were only copies of old styles. Some longcases were made in Continental Europe and the USA, but they are mostly associated with the British Isles.
After the Golden Age, the basic technology didn’t really change at all. But longcases became democratised: the top London makers moved on to other types of clock, but many, many provincial makers, a lot of them moonlighting between other jobs, produced longcases for middle-class houses and country cottages. These were still not cheap, and would often be the most expensive thing in the house.
There was one big style change in 200 years. Early longcase clocks all have brass dials. But around 1770, in Birmingham, they began to make clocks with white, painted dials. These were cheaper, allowed more customisation, and were easier to read in low light, so they rapidly took over from brass dials completely. The earliest painted dials had only a small amount of decoration, but the painting became more and more extensive over time. There were some other evolutions that can help date a clock: seconds dials and date wheels, initially only seen on the very best clocks, became standard, while weights changed from lead to cast iron (matching the dial shift).
Every longcase is unique: in the later period there was greater mass-production of movements, but dials and cases were always individual. Provincial, painted-dial clocks used to be less valuable than London or brass-dial ones, but the difference has evened out, as people like a clock with local interest.
Later clocks are nearly always either 30-hour or 8-day. The 30-hour ones have a single weight that is hauled up on a rope or chain, while 8-day ones have two weights on pulleys, with two holes in the dial and a winding tool. (Though occasionally 30-hour clocks would have fake winding holes, to make them look more expensive.) 30-hour clocks usually have the cheaper count wheel striking, while 8-day clocks almost always have rack striking. All other factors being equal, 8-day clocks are always more desirable, but an attractive 30-hour clock will be worth more than a hugely oversized 8-day one, which won’t fit a modern home. Moon phase dials and automata, which became common from the mid-18th century, always command a premium.
Part 7: Regulators
Regulators are clocks that were designed to be extra-accurate, in order to set other clocks by or for laboratory use. They are usually recognisable by being plain in design and not co-axial, which means the hands are on separate dials, although they still run off the same movement. Two features were developed to make regulators more accurate than a standard provincial longcase. One was the deadbeat escapement: an improved version of the anchor escapement, which fitted the pieces together more smoothly to eliminate recoil. An even more accurate escapement, called the grasshopper escapement, was invented by John Harrison, of whom more later. This has very low friction, and inaccuracy in one direction is automatically compensated in the other.
The other new feature was pendulums that compensated for changes in temperature. The mercury pendulum was invented by George Graham in 1725, and remained the laboratory standard until the 20th century. John Harrison later invented the gridiron pendulum, which has strips of two different kinds of metal, and this became more widely used.
Vienna regulators are a wall-mounted version of the longcase regulator: as the name suggests, they were a big export from Austria.
The other thing that affects pendulum accuracy is air friction. The latest versions of longcase regulators isolated the pendulum in a low-pressure chamber. These include the Shortt clock, which was the laboratory standard from the 1920s to 1940s and was the most accurate pendulum clock ever, with an error of less than a second a year, although it had some electronic components.
A version of Harrison’s grasshopper clock, albeit using modern materials, called Burgess Clock B, recently set the record for the most accurate purely mechanical clock operating in free air, with an error of 5/8 of a second in 100 days.
The other new feature was pendulums that compensated for changes in temperature. The mercury pendulum was invented by George Graham in 1725, and remained the laboratory standard until the 20th century. John Harrison later invented the gridiron pendulum, which has strips of two different kinds of metal, and this became more widely used.
Vienna regulators are a wall-mounted version of the longcase regulator: as the name suggests, they were a big export from Austria.
The other thing that affects pendulum accuracy is air friction. The latest versions of longcase regulators isolated the pendulum in a low-pressure chamber. These include the Shortt clock, which was the laboratory standard from the 1920s to 1940s and was the most accurate pendulum clock ever, with an error of less than a second a year, although it had some electronic components.
A version of Harrison’s grasshopper clock, albeit using modern materials, called Burgess Clock B, recently set the record for the most accurate purely mechanical clock operating in free air, with an error of 5/8 of a second in 100 days.
Part 8: Pocket watches
The two pallets of a verge escapement provide a constant, alternating force on the foliot or balance wheel. Its oscillation is entirely dependent on the external force being exerted on it. But a pendulum exhibits what is mathematically called simple harmonic motion: the further it gets from the origin, the greater the force naturally pulling it back in the opposite direction. That makes it less dependent on the level of force coming from its power source, and so more accurate.
Just at the same time pendulum clocks were being developed, Hooke and Huygens between them (they argued over precedence) had the idea of adding a hairspring to the balance wheel, making its movement semi-harmonic. This increased the accuracy of watches to something like ten minutes per day, making them viable timekeepers for the first time.
King Charles II introduced the waistcoat to Britain as part of the Restoration in 1660. It was based on Persian vests that he had seen at diplomatic courts, and indeed is one of the few items of clothing whose origins can be pinpointed precisely. It led to the refinement of the watch case shape to something that could be worn inside a waistcoat: the pocket watch.
The pocket watch was a shape and size that remained standard for men’s watches until the early 20th century. The simple reason was that the mechanism had no protection from the elements, so the watch had to be kept as safe and still as possible. Aristocratic women, who were less active, wore watches more as jewellery.
However, unlike pendulum clocks, there was a series of significant innovations through the 18th and 19th centuries. With the balance wheel sprung, every other part of the mechanism was looked at for improvements.
The first thing was to develop a better escapement than the creaking verge escapement. The cylinder escapement, invented by Thomas Tompion in 1695, used a hollowed-out cylinder and wedge-shaped teeth on the balance wheel. It was much flatter than the verge escapement, but was still high-friction so not particularly successful. A couple of other systems were tried, but the one that really worked was the lever escapement. This was invented by Thomas Mudge in the 1750s, and most watches made from 1800 up to the present day use it. The lever escapement looks a bit like a sideways version of the anchor escapement. The balance wheel has a pin, which knocks a lever with a fork-shaped end first one way, then the other. Two pallets on the other end of the lever interlock with the escape wheel: one receives an impulse from it, the other stops it. As with other escapements, it then connects to a gear train, which both operates the hands and scales down the torque from the power source, so it will last for over a day.
The key advantage of the lever escapement is that the balance wheel is free-floating for all but minimal contact with the pallets, making its movement fully harmonic. This was the second big step forward in accuracy after the addition of the hairspring, getting it under one minute per day. The lever escapement can also restart itself if it gets knocked.
But even a lever escapement has various points where there is a large amount of contact, in particular the pallets and the pivot bearings for each of the wheels. For these to remain accurate over decades of use, you need a material that is very hard-wearing, very low-friction, and not heavy. What fits these criteria is jewels: most often rubies and sapphires, but sometimes diamonds or garnets are used. A patent for jewel bearings was filed in 1704, by a group of watchmakers with French names but working in London. One of them was a friend of Isaac Newton.
Until the beginning of the 20th century, natural jewels were used, albeit low-grade ones that were considered unsuitable for jewellery. Then a process for making synthetic corundum was developed, and since then watches have used synthetic jewels. In either case, don’t get too excited as the intrinsic value of the jewels is very low: the cost comes in working them into the right shapes. A fully jewelled time-only mechanism has 17 jewels. A non-jewelled version of the lever escapement, called the pin-pallet escapement, was developed in the 19th century, for use in the cheapest watches and timers. In the 1960s there was a sudden craze for adding more and more jewels to watches – up to 100, most of which were totally non-functional. An ISO standard was developed to put an end to that, although it still allowed jewels with spurious functionality.
The going barrel was invented in 1760 by Jean-Antoine Lépine, watchmaker to the French monarchy. This solved the problem of declining torque from the mainspring once and for all, rendering the fusée obsolete. It works by using a longer mainspring and coiling it in an S shape, some around the inside of the barrel, some around the centre axle. So in the section of spring actually used, the torque is even. The other advantage of the going barrel is that it still provides power while being wound: it has teeth on the outside and the whole barrel rotates, while winding is from the axle. The disadvantage is that a going barrel has a lot of stored energy even when wound down, so they are dangerous to disassemble if you don’t know what you’re doing, especially the big ones in clocks.
The greatest pocket watch maker of all time (and he was a dab hand at clocks as well) was Abraham-Louis Breguet, who was Swiss-born but worked in Paris. His career spanned the late 18th and early 19th centuries, his pieces being hugely fashionable in the courts of Louis XVI and later Napoleon Bonaparte. A great many critical inventions to watchmaking can be credited to him, including the wristwatch itself, the automatic wind, the perpetual calendar, the observation chronometer (an early version of the chronograph) and the tourbillon. He was also the first watchmaker to have an obvious signature style, in terms of fonts and design.
Breguet’s greatest piece, now in a museum in Israel, is the Marie Antoinette. It was commissioned to have every known complication and maximum richness of materials, with no time or money limitations on its production. He worked on it for over 40 years, long after the death of Marie Antoinette, for whom it was initially intended – and indeed it was only finished four years after his death, by his son.
Another thing Breguet was particularly known for are tactile watches. This was a cheaper way of making a watch readable at night than adding a repeater. Instead, there is a hand and raised hour markers on the outside of the case, so you could feel the time from your bedside table – or discreetly with it inside your pocket.
Early pocket watches had to be wound and set by inserting a separate key. The company Patek Philippe was founded by a Pole called Antoni Patek, who began making watches in Switzerland in 1839, and he was joined by the Frenchman Adrien Philippe in 1845. Their first big success was the development of pocket watches that wound and set from the stem. You pull the stem out, and levers switch its operation from winding the mainspring to adjusting the hands. These were first sold at the Great Exhibition of 1851, with Queen Victoria and Prince Albert being enthusiastic customers. Later on, systems were developed where the watch wound from the stem, but with a safety catch to prevent the time accidentally being changed. That became mandatory for railroad watches. Note that stem bearings are sensitive and non-jewelled, so for a manual-wind watch you need to avoid putting unnecessary force on them.
It was indeed during the 19th century that Switzerland became the pre-eminent centre for watchmaking. Switzerland was very decentralised, which made it suited to the process of établissage. This was basically the same as was happening with longcase clock manufacture in England: cottage industries of part-time workers sharing and assembling each other’s components. The idea that every component of a watch should have been made in-house is only recent.
Note though that while Patek Philippe was always at the top end of the market, in this era the Swiss went for quantity over quality, and “Swiss-made” was often an indication of shoddiness. At this time Switzerland’s main competition was the USA, whose watches were heavily linked to the growth of the railroads and consequent need for precise timing. Unlike the Swiss, the American makers produced all their components in the same place. The Elgin factory in Illinois, founded in 1864, was for a century the biggest watchmaking centre in the world. Other big American watchmaking names include Waltham, Hamilton, and Rockford.
Just at the same time pendulum clocks were being developed, Hooke and Huygens between them (they argued over precedence) had the idea of adding a hairspring to the balance wheel, making its movement semi-harmonic. This increased the accuracy of watches to something like ten minutes per day, making them viable timekeepers for the first time.
King Charles II introduced the waistcoat to Britain as part of the Restoration in 1660. It was based on Persian vests that he had seen at diplomatic courts, and indeed is one of the few items of clothing whose origins can be pinpointed precisely. It led to the refinement of the watch case shape to something that could be worn inside a waistcoat: the pocket watch.
The pocket watch was a shape and size that remained standard for men’s watches until the early 20th century. The simple reason was that the mechanism had no protection from the elements, so the watch had to be kept as safe and still as possible. Aristocratic women, who were less active, wore watches more as jewellery.
However, unlike pendulum clocks, there was a series of significant innovations through the 18th and 19th centuries. With the balance wheel sprung, every other part of the mechanism was looked at for improvements.
The first thing was to develop a better escapement than the creaking verge escapement. The cylinder escapement, invented by Thomas Tompion in 1695, used a hollowed-out cylinder and wedge-shaped teeth on the balance wheel. It was much flatter than the verge escapement, but was still high-friction so not particularly successful. A couple of other systems were tried, but the one that really worked was the lever escapement. This was invented by Thomas Mudge in the 1750s, and most watches made from 1800 up to the present day use it. The lever escapement looks a bit like a sideways version of the anchor escapement. The balance wheel has a pin, which knocks a lever with a fork-shaped end first one way, then the other. Two pallets on the other end of the lever interlock with the escape wheel: one receives an impulse from it, the other stops it. As with other escapements, it then connects to a gear train, which both operates the hands and scales down the torque from the power source, so it will last for over a day.
The key advantage of the lever escapement is that the balance wheel is free-floating for all but minimal contact with the pallets, making its movement fully harmonic. This was the second big step forward in accuracy after the addition of the hairspring, getting it under one minute per day. The lever escapement can also restart itself if it gets knocked.
But even a lever escapement has various points where there is a large amount of contact, in particular the pallets and the pivot bearings for each of the wheels. For these to remain accurate over decades of use, you need a material that is very hard-wearing, very low-friction, and not heavy. What fits these criteria is jewels: most often rubies and sapphires, but sometimes diamonds or garnets are used. A patent for jewel bearings was filed in 1704, by a group of watchmakers with French names but working in London. One of them was a friend of Isaac Newton.
Until the beginning of the 20th century, natural jewels were used, albeit low-grade ones that were considered unsuitable for jewellery. Then a process for making synthetic corundum was developed, and since then watches have used synthetic jewels. In either case, don’t get too excited as the intrinsic value of the jewels is very low: the cost comes in working them into the right shapes. A fully jewelled time-only mechanism has 17 jewels. A non-jewelled version of the lever escapement, called the pin-pallet escapement, was developed in the 19th century, for use in the cheapest watches and timers. In the 1960s there was a sudden craze for adding more and more jewels to watches – up to 100, most of which were totally non-functional. An ISO standard was developed to put an end to that, although it still allowed jewels with spurious functionality.
The going barrel was invented in 1760 by Jean-Antoine Lépine, watchmaker to the French monarchy. This solved the problem of declining torque from the mainspring once and for all, rendering the fusée obsolete. It works by using a longer mainspring and coiling it in an S shape, some around the inside of the barrel, some around the centre axle. So in the section of spring actually used, the torque is even. The other advantage of the going barrel is that it still provides power while being wound: it has teeth on the outside and the whole barrel rotates, while winding is from the axle. The disadvantage is that a going barrel has a lot of stored energy even when wound down, so they are dangerous to disassemble if you don’t know what you’re doing, especially the big ones in clocks.
The greatest pocket watch maker of all time (and he was a dab hand at clocks as well) was Abraham-Louis Breguet, who was Swiss-born but worked in Paris. His career spanned the late 18th and early 19th centuries, his pieces being hugely fashionable in the courts of Louis XVI and later Napoleon Bonaparte. A great many critical inventions to watchmaking can be credited to him, including the wristwatch itself, the automatic wind, the perpetual calendar, the observation chronometer (an early version of the chronograph) and the tourbillon. He was also the first watchmaker to have an obvious signature style, in terms of fonts and design.
Breguet’s greatest piece, now in a museum in Israel, is the Marie Antoinette. It was commissioned to have every known complication and maximum richness of materials, with no time or money limitations on its production. He worked on it for over 40 years, long after the death of Marie Antoinette, for whom it was initially intended – and indeed it was only finished four years after his death, by his son.
Another thing Breguet was particularly known for are tactile watches. This was a cheaper way of making a watch readable at night than adding a repeater. Instead, there is a hand and raised hour markers on the outside of the case, so you could feel the time from your bedside table – or discreetly with it inside your pocket.
Early pocket watches had to be wound and set by inserting a separate key. The company Patek Philippe was founded by a Pole called Antoni Patek, who began making watches in Switzerland in 1839, and he was joined by the Frenchman Adrien Philippe in 1845. Their first big success was the development of pocket watches that wound and set from the stem. You pull the stem out, and levers switch its operation from winding the mainspring to adjusting the hands. These were first sold at the Great Exhibition of 1851, with Queen Victoria and Prince Albert being enthusiastic customers. Later on, systems were developed where the watch wound from the stem, but with a safety catch to prevent the time accidentally being changed. That became mandatory for railroad watches. Note that stem bearings are sensitive and non-jewelled, so for a manual-wind watch you need to avoid putting unnecessary force on them.
It was indeed during the 19th century that Switzerland became the pre-eminent centre for watchmaking. Switzerland was very decentralised, which made it suited to the process of établissage. This was basically the same as was happening with longcase clock manufacture in England: cottage industries of part-time workers sharing and assembling each other’s components. The idea that every component of a watch should have been made in-house is only recent.
Note though that while Patek Philippe was always at the top end of the market, in this era the Swiss went for quantity over quality, and “Swiss-made” was often an indication of shoddiness. At this time Switzerland’s main competition was the USA, whose watches were heavily linked to the growth of the railroads and consequent need for precise timing. Unlike the Swiss, the American makers produced all their components in the same place. The Elgin factory in Illinois, founded in 1864, was for a century the biggest watchmaking centre in the world. Other big American watchmaking names include Waltham, Hamilton, and Rockford.
Part 9: Bracket, table and mantel clocks
Bracket clocks were another descendent of lantern clocks. Originally they did mount on a wall bracket, but then they changed from weight-driven to spring-driven, which enabled them to sit on a table. They usually have ebonised (painted black) wood cases, and have a handle by which they could be carried from room to room.
Over time the carrying around became less important and the handle was omitted. There is a huge variety of these table and mantel clocks. From the mid-18th century on, London makers focused on them rather than longcases. The French went in for garnitures, which were a three-piece set of clock and two candelabra or vases.
Skeleton clocks have a glass case or dome, so as to show off the movement. Sometimes they encase that in an architectural model, e.g. of York Minster.
Mystery clocks were invented by Robert-Charles Houdin, the 19th-century Frenchman who was the father of modern stage magic. (The guy Harry Houdini named himself after.) They disguise the mechanism that turns the hands, e.g. by using rotating glass columns and discs rather than metal gears. They are highly prized and valuable.
An invention of the later nineteenth century was clocks that not only strike the hours, but play a fragment of a tune on the quarter hours, on bells, rods or gongs. These are called chiming clocks, and are found in many shapes and sizes. They are easily recognisable because they have three winding holes: one for going, one for striking, one for chiming. The Westminster Chimes is the most common tune.
Over time the carrying around became less important and the handle was omitted. There is a huge variety of these table and mantel clocks. From the mid-18th century on, London makers focused on them rather than longcases. The French went in for garnitures, which were a three-piece set of clock and two candelabra or vases.
Skeleton clocks have a glass case or dome, so as to show off the movement. Sometimes they encase that in an architectural model, e.g. of York Minster.
Mystery clocks were invented by Robert-Charles Houdin, the 19th-century Frenchman who was the father of modern stage magic. (The guy Harry Houdini named himself after.) They disguise the mechanism that turns the hands, e.g. by using rotating glass columns and discs rather than metal gears. They are highly prized and valuable.
An invention of the later nineteenth century was clocks that not only strike the hours, but play a fragment of a tune on the quarter hours, on bells, rods or gongs. These are called chiming clocks, and are found in many shapes and sizes. They are easily recognisable because they have three winding holes: one for going, one for striking, one for chiming. The Westminster Chimes is the most common tune.
Part 10: Wall and cartel clocks
These are clocks that mount on a wall, and as such can be either weight-driven or spring-driven.
Cartel clocks have an elaborate gilt-bronze surround that usually flows down like a comma. They were an invention of the French Rococo period (1730s and 1740s), though there are some later, Revival examples.
Cuckoo clocks, which are nearly always weight and pendulum based, are a famous example of a wall clock, these having wooden cases and automata. Their origins are obscure, but they were being mass produced in the Black Forest, for the tourist market, by around 1850.
Act of Parliament clocks are large, plain wall clocks that hung in taverns. In 1797, Pitt the Younger introduced a tax on clocks and watches, which was so unpopular it was repealed after nine months. These tavern clocks are sometimes claimed to have been developed in response to that tax, but the vast majority of them either pre or post-date it.
Cartel clocks have an elaborate gilt-bronze surround that usually flows down like a comma. They were an invention of the French Rococo period (1730s and 1740s), though there are some later, Revival examples.
Cuckoo clocks, which are nearly always weight and pendulum based, are a famous example of a wall clock, these having wooden cases and automata. Their origins are obscure, but they were being mass produced in the Black Forest, for the tourist market, by around 1850.
Act of Parliament clocks are large, plain wall clocks that hung in taverns. In 1797, Pitt the Younger introduced a tax on clocks and watches, which was so unpopular it was repealed after nine months. These tavern clocks are sometimes claimed to have been developed in response to that tax, but the vast majority of them either pre or post-date it.
Part 11: Chronometers
The drive for greater accuracy in the 18th century had a serious point to it. Intercontinental shipping was growing rapidly, yet ships that couldn’t establish their exact position had a tendency to hit things and sink. It had been known since Ancient times that you could establish your latitude (north-south position) if you could observe the highest point in the sky of either the Sun or the Pole Star. But longitude (east-west position) was much more tricky. As you know, there is a time difference when you travel east or west. It was realised that if you knew the exact time in your port of origin, and could compare that with your current time, as established from the sun or stars (you can tell the time from the Big Dipper, though only in the Northern Hemisphere), then you could work out your longitude.
What was therefore required was a very accurate clock or watch, which could maintain its accuracy through a rough sea voyage: so pendulum clocks were obviously a non-starter.
John Harrison famously went a long way towards solving this problem, by inventing the marine chronometer. This was essentially a watch, but a very big one, designed and built for utmost precision. He used a special escapement, superficially like the verge escapement but with diamond pallets, and did many other things that were pushing both watch design and materials science to their limits (e.g. very large but perfectly flat brass wheels). Most importantly for the development of normal watches, he made the balance wheel resistant to changes in temperature, by using a bi-metallic structure. Modern balance wheels are made of a nickel-iron alloy called Invar, which was invented in 1896 and is extremely resistant to thermal expansion.
Harrison was given a chunk of money by the government near the end of his life, but the actual Longitude Prize they had set up was never awarded. His problem was that there was a second method for longitude, called the method of lunar distances. This is based on the relative angles of sun and moon, and it does work reasonably well, indeed was still being used in the late 19th century by ships that couldn’t afford a chronometer. But it wasn’t as accurate as the chronometer method, and required some very fiddly calculations. Yet the two times Harrison did major sea trails to prove the accuracy of his chronometers, devotees of the lunar distances method such as Neville Maskelyne cast doubt on the results, saying they could have been flukes.
Nonetheless, after Harrrison died, his successors found less prohibitively expensive ways of making chronometers, and it gradually became standard for all large ships to have one.
The term chronometer (not to be confused with chronograph, of which more later) now usually refers to a wristwatch that has individually passed stringent official tests for accuracy under different conditions, receiving a certificate. Note that although quartz chronometers exist, the accuracy of any quartz movement is so much better that makers will rarely bother to submit them for testing.
What was therefore required was a very accurate clock or watch, which could maintain its accuracy through a rough sea voyage: so pendulum clocks were obviously a non-starter.
John Harrison famously went a long way towards solving this problem, by inventing the marine chronometer. This was essentially a watch, but a very big one, designed and built for utmost precision. He used a special escapement, superficially like the verge escapement but with diamond pallets, and did many other things that were pushing both watch design and materials science to their limits (e.g. very large but perfectly flat brass wheels). Most importantly for the development of normal watches, he made the balance wheel resistant to changes in temperature, by using a bi-metallic structure. Modern balance wheels are made of a nickel-iron alloy called Invar, which was invented in 1896 and is extremely resistant to thermal expansion.
Harrison was given a chunk of money by the government near the end of his life, but the actual Longitude Prize they had set up was never awarded. His problem was that there was a second method for longitude, called the method of lunar distances. This is based on the relative angles of sun and moon, and it does work reasonably well, indeed was still being used in the late 19th century by ships that couldn’t afford a chronometer. But it wasn’t as accurate as the chronometer method, and required some very fiddly calculations. Yet the two times Harrison did major sea trails to prove the accuracy of his chronometers, devotees of the lunar distances method such as Neville Maskelyne cast doubt on the results, saying they could have been flukes.
Nonetheless, after Harrrison died, his successors found less prohibitively expensive ways of making chronometers, and it gradually became standard for all large ships to have one.
The term chronometer (not to be confused with chronograph, of which more later) now usually refers to a wristwatch that has individually passed stringent official tests for accuracy under different conditions, receiving a certificate. Note that although quartz chronometers exist, the accuracy of any quartz movement is so much better that makers will rarely bother to submit them for testing.
Part 12: Carriage clocks
Carriage clocks were invented in 1812, by Breguet for the Emperor Napoleon. They are really a clock-watch hybrid: they have a brass rectangular case like a clock, but a balance wheel and a platform escapement, which is pretty much the same as the lever escapement you find in a watch. As such, they work as travelling clocks.
English carriage clocks are usually more valuable than French ones, because English ones are less common and tend to be bigger. Some carriage clocks have complicated striking mechanisms: including the Grande Sonnerie, which strikes the quarters, repeating the hour each time. A quarter striker without the repeated hour is a Petite Sonnerie.
English carriage clocks are usually more valuable than French ones, because English ones are less common and tend to be bigger. Some carriage clocks have complicated striking mechanisms: including the Grande Sonnerie, which strikes the quarters, repeating the hour each time. A quarter striker without the repeated hour is a Petite Sonnerie.
Part 13: Trench watches
As we have seen, women began wearing watches on their wrists earlier than men. Breguet created what is thought to have been the first proper wristwatch (as opposed to armlet) in 1810, although it hasn’t survived.
The first men to wear watches on their wrists were soldiers. In coordinating a manoeuvre, synchronised timing was obviously critical. But it was a pain to have to keep getting a pocket watch out and putting it back. Military officers started wearing wristwatches during the 1880s, in conflicts like the Anglo-Burma War of 1885. Uptake continued in the Second Boer War, but it was during the First World War that the impact really became transformative. The War Office began issuing wristwatches as standard kit in 1917, and by the Armistice nearly every enlisted man had a wristwatch. When they returned to civilian life, they carried on wearing them, and the previous cultural belief that wristwatches were effeminate disappeared. By 1930, sales of pocket watches had collapsed, wristwatches outnumbering them by 50 to 1.
These early wristwatches are known generically as trench watches, whether or not they were actually worn in the trenches. Indeed, unscrupulous dealers will now label ladies’ watches of the era, which were smaller and had more pointed lugs, as men’s trench watches, because those are more desirable.
The first men to wear watches on their wrists were soldiers. In coordinating a manoeuvre, synchronised timing was obviously critical. But it was a pain to have to keep getting a pocket watch out and putting it back. Military officers started wearing wristwatches during the 1880s, in conflicts like the Anglo-Burma War of 1885. Uptake continued in the Second Boer War, but it was during the First World War that the impact really became transformative. The War Office began issuing wristwatches as standard kit in 1917, and by the Armistice nearly every enlisted man had a wristwatch. When they returned to civilian life, they carried on wearing them, and the previous cultural belief that wristwatches were effeminate disappeared. By 1930, sales of pocket watches had collapsed, wristwatches outnumbering them by 50 to 1.
These early wristwatches are known generically as trench watches, whether or not they were actually worn in the trenches. Indeed, unscrupulous dealers will now label ladies’ watches of the era, which were smaller and had more pointed lugs, as men’s trench watches, because those are more desirable.
Part 14: Electric (non-quartz) clocks and watches
Electric clocks date back a surprisingly long way. Inventors started making clocks with primitive batteries as early as 1815, and around 1840 several inventors independently came up with clocks powered by electric current. The first production model of electric clock was the Hipp-Toggle, which came in 1843. When mains electricity became widespread, in the 1890s, clocks were one of the first appliances to make use of it.
However, these early electric clocks were all electromechanical, i.e. they replaced the weights or mainspring with electricity, but still used a pendulum or balance wheel to keep time. The first clock actually to measure time electrically was the synchronous clock, which counted the oscillations of the AC power grid. It was invented in 1918, entered commercial production in 1931, and by the mid-30s had replaced mechanical clocks as the most popular type of domestic clock.
The first electric watches were demoed in March 1952, by Elgin and the French company LIP. Hamilton released the first retail model, in 1957. The first generation of electrically-controlled watches still had balance wheels, with electricity replacing the mainspring. The second generation, including the Bulova Accutron, used a small metal tuning fork to keep time.
However, these early electric clocks were all electromechanical, i.e. they replaced the weights or mainspring with electricity, but still used a pendulum or balance wheel to keep time. The first clock actually to measure time electrically was the synchronous clock, which counted the oscillations of the AC power grid. It was invented in 1918, entered commercial production in 1931, and by the mid-30s had replaced mechanical clocks as the most popular type of domestic clock.
The first electric watches were demoed in March 1952, by Elgin and the French company LIP. Hamilton released the first retail model, in 1957. The first generation of electrically-controlled watches still had balance wheels, with electricity replacing the mainspring. The second generation, including the Bulova Accutron, used a small metal tuning fork to keep time.
Part 15: Quartz clocks and watches
Many materials can be shaped into a resonator, which is a structure that amplifies one frequency of vibration and damps out all others. All musical instruments have a resonator of some kind.
Some crystalline structures have a property called piezoelectricity. This means that under mechanical stress, a small electrical current is generated across certain planes. Conversely, passing electricity through it creates vibration. This effect was discovered by the Curie brothers in 1880-1, but considered just a curiosity until World War One, when it was used to make sonar. After the war its uses spread, for example in recording equipment.
So if you have a piezoelectric resonator and pass a small current through it, you get a very regular vibration. Quartz (silica dioxide) is a very common and cheap piezoelectric mineral, which is also resistant to temperature variation. It was originally used as a resonator for radio waves, but scientists at NIST (the US Bureau of Standards) saw that it could make a more accurate timekeeper than a pendulum clock. The first quartz clock was built in 1927 at Bell Labs.
A quartz clock uses a small piece of quartz shaped like a tuning fork as its resonator. Nearly always, it is designed to vibrate at 32,768 Hz (25), so that an electric counter can easily step it down to one impulse per second. Lower frequencies need big crystals and are within human hearing range; higher frequencies use more power. An analogue quartz clock or watch still has a mechanical gear train to turn the hands.
But for the next 40 years, quartz clocks remained confined to laboratories, some claiming they would never become domestically available. The difficult bit was that electric counter in the middle, which relied on vacuum tubes until the development of semiconductor electronics in the 1960s. The first domestic quartz clocks came out in the late 1960s, closely followed by the first quartz wristwatch, the Seiko Astron, which was released on Christmas Day 1969.
From the 1630s to the 1850s, Japan had been essentially closed to the outside world, having good relations only with the Netherlands. Clock-making was also severely limited by the Japanese counting night hours as a different length to day hours. Japan began importing Swiss watches in the 1870s, initially just as curios, but then they adopted Western hours and watches became practical. For tax reasons, importation shifted to assembly, and then to local manufacture, the two main watchmakers that emerged being Seiko and Citizen. But while the first prototype quartz watches were made in Switzerland, the Swiss were wedded to their traditional processes and infrastructure, and were slow to recognise that quartz would be a game-changer. It was the Japanese who chose to go heavily into quartz, and by doing so stole a march on the rest of the world.
A standard quartz clock or watch has an accuracy of around half a second per day, the error coming from temperature changes and imperfections in the remaining moving parts. (Quartz chronometers use a “quartz oven” to keep the crystal at a consistent temperature.) That is better than almost all mechanical movements, and needs no winding and little other maintenance. By the 1980s, the quartz technology had been perfected and the cost of electronics had come right down. There was a tidal wave of quartz replacing balance wheel mechanisms, not only in clocks and watches but also in lower-grade uses such as alarm clocks, bank vault locks, and munitions fuses.
For most applications, this was indeed terminal for mechanical movements. Apart from the odd bespoke, arty piece, there are hardly any new mechanical clocks being made. If that’s what you want, there are plenty of antique ones still around.
The mechanical watch industry was also hit very hard. The Swiss lost a huge amount of their market share – which had been around 90% in World War Two, as they happily sold watches to both sides – and many big companies went under. They were saved from complete annihilation by realising that at the high end, there would still be demand for mechanical watches. A watch is the only universally acceptable male jewellery, and a finely-crafted, ticking mechanical piece has character, unlike the rather soulless quartz.
In general, mechanical watches are easily distinguishable from quartz fakes because they have a seconds hand that sweeps smoothly, rather than clicking one second at a time. But to note, early quartz watches did have a sweeping seconds hand, until they realised that drained the battery too quickly, while a few mechanical watches have a dead seconds hand as a special complication, because it makes it easier to time things.
Luxury makers did experiment with quartz. Rolex produced the Oysterquartz, never in large numbers but it was going as late as 2001. Patek Philippe still use quartz for some of their ladies’ watches. But in general, mechanical movements rule the high end of the watch market.
At the lower end, Switzerland launched the Swatch brand in 1983. Swatch became a major success by offering cheap yet colourful and fashionable quartz watches. They also found a way to bring the cost of mechanical watches right down, by mass-producing everything and minimising the number of moving parts. So today you can buy a Swiss-made mechanical watch in the £100-150 price range.
Some crystalline structures have a property called piezoelectricity. This means that under mechanical stress, a small electrical current is generated across certain planes. Conversely, passing electricity through it creates vibration. This effect was discovered by the Curie brothers in 1880-1, but considered just a curiosity until World War One, when it was used to make sonar. After the war its uses spread, for example in recording equipment.
So if you have a piezoelectric resonator and pass a small current through it, you get a very regular vibration. Quartz (silica dioxide) is a very common and cheap piezoelectric mineral, which is also resistant to temperature variation. It was originally used as a resonator for radio waves, but scientists at NIST (the US Bureau of Standards) saw that it could make a more accurate timekeeper than a pendulum clock. The first quartz clock was built in 1927 at Bell Labs.
A quartz clock uses a small piece of quartz shaped like a tuning fork as its resonator. Nearly always, it is designed to vibrate at 32,768 Hz (25), so that an electric counter can easily step it down to one impulse per second. Lower frequencies need big crystals and are within human hearing range; higher frequencies use more power. An analogue quartz clock or watch still has a mechanical gear train to turn the hands.
But for the next 40 years, quartz clocks remained confined to laboratories, some claiming they would never become domestically available. The difficult bit was that electric counter in the middle, which relied on vacuum tubes until the development of semiconductor electronics in the 1960s. The first domestic quartz clocks came out in the late 1960s, closely followed by the first quartz wristwatch, the Seiko Astron, which was released on Christmas Day 1969.
From the 1630s to the 1850s, Japan had been essentially closed to the outside world, having good relations only with the Netherlands. Clock-making was also severely limited by the Japanese counting night hours as a different length to day hours. Japan began importing Swiss watches in the 1870s, initially just as curios, but then they adopted Western hours and watches became practical. For tax reasons, importation shifted to assembly, and then to local manufacture, the two main watchmakers that emerged being Seiko and Citizen. But while the first prototype quartz watches were made in Switzerland, the Swiss were wedded to their traditional processes and infrastructure, and were slow to recognise that quartz would be a game-changer. It was the Japanese who chose to go heavily into quartz, and by doing so stole a march on the rest of the world.
A standard quartz clock or watch has an accuracy of around half a second per day, the error coming from temperature changes and imperfections in the remaining moving parts. (Quartz chronometers use a “quartz oven” to keep the crystal at a consistent temperature.) That is better than almost all mechanical movements, and needs no winding and little other maintenance. By the 1980s, the quartz technology had been perfected and the cost of electronics had come right down. There was a tidal wave of quartz replacing balance wheel mechanisms, not only in clocks and watches but also in lower-grade uses such as alarm clocks, bank vault locks, and munitions fuses.
For most applications, this was indeed terminal for mechanical movements. Apart from the odd bespoke, arty piece, there are hardly any new mechanical clocks being made. If that’s what you want, there are plenty of antique ones still around.
The mechanical watch industry was also hit very hard. The Swiss lost a huge amount of their market share – which had been around 90% in World War Two, as they happily sold watches to both sides – and many big companies went under. They were saved from complete annihilation by realising that at the high end, there would still be demand for mechanical watches. A watch is the only universally acceptable male jewellery, and a finely-crafted, ticking mechanical piece has character, unlike the rather soulless quartz.
In general, mechanical watches are easily distinguishable from quartz fakes because they have a seconds hand that sweeps smoothly, rather than clicking one second at a time. But to note, early quartz watches did have a sweeping seconds hand, until they realised that drained the battery too quickly, while a few mechanical watches have a dead seconds hand as a special complication, because it makes it easier to time things.
Luxury makers did experiment with quartz. Rolex produced the Oysterquartz, never in large numbers but it was going as late as 2001. Patek Philippe still use quartz for some of their ladies’ watches. But in general, mechanical movements rule the high end of the watch market.
At the lower end, Switzerland launched the Swatch brand in 1983. Swatch became a major success by offering cheap yet colourful and fashionable quartz watches. They also found a way to bring the cost of mechanical watches right down, by mass-producing everything and minimising the number of moving parts. So today you can buy a Swiss-made mechanical watch in the £100-150 price range.
Part 16: Atomic clocks
Atoms themselves have an oscillation pattern, not unlike that of a balance wheel on a spring. The negatively charged electrons that orbit the positively charged nucleus jump further out when they absorb energy from a photon, but then are pulled back in, generally releasing a photon of the same energy. But if the initial photon was of very high energy, it may spring back in two jumps, releasing two photons of different frequencies. These released photons can register as visible light, or as microwaves. This process lies behind the coloured flames certain salts give off when heated. You can detect these released photons with a laser or maser (microwave-spectrum laser).
If the original energy pulse was the “tick”, the detection of these released photons is the “tock”. You then adjust the energy pulse to the natural frequency that causes all the atoms to resonate, which will be the same for any atoms of that element, and measure time from that frequency. For technical reasons, the element most effective for this process is caesium.
The first caesium clock was built in 1955, at NPL in Teddington. The maser, a critical part of the equipment, was invented in 1953 by Charles Townes, who I met in 2010. (He died in 2015, aged 99.)
Caesium clocks now work as fountains: the atoms are cooled to near absolute zero, projected in the air by laser, and are brought down by gravity. The percentage of transitions is measured by apparatus they pass through in the middle. Accuracy is improved by slowing them right down in this manner.
Atomic clocks were another step change in accuracy, later versions achieving one second in a million years and beyond. Very recently, atomic clocks have been developed that use optical rather than microwave resonance, with elements like ytterbium and strontium. These get the accuracy into one second in billions of years.
Caesium clocks are lab-only devices. Rubidium atomic clocks are less accurate, but cheaper and can be made much smaller. They are used in GPS systems and calibrating equipment. Truly portable atomic clocks are a current military research goal.
Many consumer clocks and watches now market themselves as “atomic”, but they are not atomic clocks themselves. What they are is quartz clocks that use a radio signal to synchronise themselves to an atomic clock every so often, which is the most accurate you can currently get in domestic timekeeping.
If the original energy pulse was the “tick”, the detection of these released photons is the “tock”. You then adjust the energy pulse to the natural frequency that causes all the atoms to resonate, which will be the same for any atoms of that element, and measure time from that frequency. For technical reasons, the element most effective for this process is caesium.
The first caesium clock was built in 1955, at NPL in Teddington. The maser, a critical part of the equipment, was invented in 1953 by Charles Townes, who I met in 2010. (He died in 2015, aged 99.)
Caesium clocks now work as fountains: the atoms are cooled to near absolute zero, projected in the air by laser, and are brought down by gravity. The percentage of transitions is measured by apparatus they pass through in the middle. Accuracy is improved by slowing them right down in this manner.
Atomic clocks were another step change in accuracy, later versions achieving one second in a million years and beyond. Very recently, atomic clocks have been developed that use optical rather than microwave resonance, with elements like ytterbium and strontium. These get the accuracy into one second in billions of years.
Caesium clocks are lab-only devices. Rubidium atomic clocks are less accurate, but cheaper and can be made much smaller. They are used in GPS systems and calibrating equipment. Truly portable atomic clocks are a current military research goal.
Many consumer clocks and watches now market themselves as “atomic”, but they are not atomic clocks themselves. What they are is quartz clocks that use a radio signal to synchronise themselves to an atomic clock every so often, which is the most accurate you can currently get in domestic timekeeping.
Part 17: Atmospheric clocks
The last type of clock that is worth a mention is atmospheric clocks. These wind the mainspring or lift the weight via a chemical that contracts and expands in response to changes in temperature and atmospheric pressure. Provided the rest of the mechanism is very efficient and low-friction, only slight changes in the weather are enough to keep the clock ticking indefinitely, making it as close to a perpetual motion machine as the laws of physics will allow. They use a torsional pendulum, which beats much more slowly than a swinging pendulum – usually twice a minute.
Atmospheric clocks actually go back a long way, having been invented around 1600 by the Dutch engineer Cornelis Drebbel, who built copies for several European monarchs. The Beverly Clock in New Zealand was made in 1865 and has never been wound – although it has stopped a fair few times. The modern version is the Atmos Clock, invented in 1928. Jaeger-Lecoultre bought the patent soon after, and have now produced over half a million: they are the standard gift the Swiss hand over to diplomatic visitors.
The Clock of the Long Now is an as-yet unrealised project to build a mechanical clock that will keep time for the next 10,000 years, i.e. for as long as human civilisation has been going so far, even in the event of a planetary catastrophe. No design has been found that doesn’t require fairly regular human maintenance: the plan is for it to be powered primarily via a manually-lifted weight, but with atmospheric power as a backup.
Atmospheric clocks actually go back a long way, having been invented around 1600 by the Dutch engineer Cornelis Drebbel, who built copies for several European monarchs. The Beverly Clock in New Zealand was made in 1865 and has never been wound – although it has stopped a fair few times. The modern version is the Atmos Clock, invented in 1928. Jaeger-Lecoultre bought the patent soon after, and have now produced over half a million: they are the standard gift the Swiss hand over to diplomatic visitors.
The Clock of the Long Now is an as-yet unrealised project to build a mechanical clock that will keep time for the next 10,000 years, i.e. for as long as human civilisation has been going so far, even in the event of a planetary catastrophe. No design has been found that doesn’t require fairly regular human maintenance: the plan is for it to be powered primarily via a manually-lifted weight, but with atmospheric power as a backup.
Part 18: Digital watches and smartwatches
Mechanical digital watches appeared in the late 19th century. The first watch with an electronic digital display appeared soon after the first quartz watch, and was based on the futuristic clock seen in 2001: A Space Odyssey. For the first few years digital watches were very expensive, but in 1975 Texas Instruments began mass-producing them at a much lower price. Early digital watches used red LED displays, which used a lot of power so would only display for a few seconds at a time, when you pressed a button. (I’m sure these appear in James Bond films of the era.) That technology was then replaced by Liquid Crystal Displays, which use less power so can be on all the time, although they are hard to see in low or strong light.
Casio was founded just after World War Two, its first product being a type of cigarette holder. It later went into scientific calculators, keyboards, and wristwatches. Possibly the best known and best loved digital watch is the Casio F-91W, released in 1991 and still in production. (That’s the square one with the blue line, featuring alarm, chronograph and water resistance. Though it has also been used by terrorists as a bomb timer.)
During the 1980s and 90s, makers of digital watches tried pushing the envelope for features they could cram in. Probably the greatest, and certainly the most ahead of its time, was the Seiko TV watch, released in 1982. Sadly, the end of analogue broadcasting in 2012 reduced that to a museum piece.
Later on, digital watches were developed that could connect to your computer. These were primitive versions of what would develop into the smartwatch. The Apple Watch was released in 2015, and there are many equivalents for Android, but the Windows OS is lagging behind.
Smartwatches are not standalone devices: their prime function is to tell you what notifications your phone has, and so whether you need to root around in your bag for it. Some have tried to merge more with Fitbits and other devices that are particularly useful on the wrist. Others have tried to ape traditional timepieces. It is fair to say that smartwatches haven’t yet set the world on fire, in the way that the iPod, iPhone and iPad did. But the kinks are being ironed out all the time, and future developments may make them transformative.
Casio was founded just after World War Two, its first product being a type of cigarette holder. It later went into scientific calculators, keyboards, and wristwatches. Possibly the best known and best loved digital watch is the Casio F-91W, released in 1991 and still in production. (That’s the square one with the blue line, featuring alarm, chronograph and water resistance. Though it has also been used by terrorists as a bomb timer.)
During the 1980s and 90s, makers of digital watches tried pushing the envelope for features they could cram in. Probably the greatest, and certainly the most ahead of its time, was the Seiko TV watch, released in 1982. Sadly, the end of analogue broadcasting in 2012 reduced that to a museum piece.
Later on, digital watches were developed that could connect to your computer. These were primitive versions of what would develop into the smartwatch. The Apple Watch was released in 2015, and there are many equivalents for Android, but the Windows OS is lagging behind.
Smartwatches are not standalone devices: their prime function is to tell you what notifications your phone has, and so whether you need to root around in your bag for it. Some have tried to merge more with Fitbits and other devices that are particularly useful on the wrist. Others have tried to ape traditional timepieces. It is fair to say that smartwatches haven’t yet set the world on fire, in the way that the iPod, iPhone and iPad did. But the kinks are being ironed out all the time, and future developments may make them transformative.
Part 19: Modern mechanical watches
The first milestone in the development of the modern watch was the first wristwatch to achieve chronometer certification, in 1914. That one was by a company called Rolex, which had been founded by Hans Wilsdorf and his brother-in-law Alfred Davis in 1905, in London. The name, which came a few years later, is thought to have just been made up, as a short word that sounded cool and timey in any language.
Rolex moved to Geneva just after the war, for tax reasons. They then set to work on one of the main problems to plague watches hitherto: how to keep water, dust, dirt and perspiration away from the movement. Their solution came in 1926: the Rolex Oyster case, an updated version of which is still their basic model today. The Oyster screws down instead of hinging, making it airtight albeit annoyingly hard to open. The difficult bit was sealing around the crown, for which they had to buy in a patented solution. Soon after, someone swam the Channel with a Rolex Oyster, which continued ticking merrily.
The other really common cause of watch breakage was from them being dropped. The most vulnerable bit is the fragile pivots that hold the relatively heavy balance wheel. The Incabloc shock protection system was invented in 1934, but took a couple of decades to become widespread. This mounts the pivot jewels on lyre-shaped springs, allowing them some room to travel without damage. Other, more powerful systems have been developed since, and practically all modern wristwatches have some kind of water resistance and some kind of shock protection.
Another key reliability issue came from the mainspring. Traditionally they were made of carbon steel, which could rust, would lose elasticity over time, and could easily break, potentially causing severe damage to the rest of the movement. The Elgin Company in America developed a far better alloy material in the 1940s, and over the following decade alloy (or “white metal”) mainsprings became universal. They are practically unbreakable, have a high elastic limit, and are non-magnetic.
Magnetism is indeed the other external force that can severely affect a mechanical watch. Only certain specialist watches (see Sports watches) are fully able to cope with it, but there has been a general move towards materials that are more anti-magnetic. One that has entered use only in the 21st century is silicon, which is also light, hard and low-friction. Despite some doubts over its long-term reliability, Patek Philippe have invested heavily in it.
One of the most fundamental issues with mechanical watches is the need to wind them every day. The average power reserve for a mechanical watch is 42 hours, so you don’t have to wind at exactly the same time each day, but you can’t leave it a full two days. Depending on your point of view, winding is either a pleasure or a chore. Breguet invented an automatic winding mechanism for pocket watches. His original design was impractical, but others improved on it and he went on to make quite a few automatic watches.
Automatics were nonetheless rare until the modern mechanism was invented by John Harwood in 1923 and then improved by Rolex, becoming the Rolex Oyster Perpetual in 1930. (Note: the Perpetual refers to the winding, not a perpetual calendar.) This mechanism consists of a fan-shaped rotor that swings round as you move your wrist, charging the mainspring. A safety catch prevents the mainspring becoming overwound. Rolex’s motivation at the time was actually linked more to their desire for water resistance: as the crown was the weak point, they wanted to minimise the amount it got touched.
The majority of modern mechanical wristwatches are automatics. But not all, and indeed quite a few extremely expensive ones are manual wind. The automatic isn’t a perfect solution: you have to be wearing the watch maybe 10 hours a day on weekdays for it to get enough power, especially if you’re just sitting at a desk all that time. It also adds to the thickness of the watch. Some very expensive contemporary watches have been developed that have much longer power reserves, from a few days up to over a month. They do it by having very long mainsprings, and in the extreme cases multiple going barrels with special winders, but at the cost of being really big and heavy.
The crystal of a watch is the transparent bit that protects the dial. There are three possible materials. Mineral glass is the oldest type: this is glass that has had some kind of heat or chemical treatment to protect it from scratches. Acrylic is a plastic. It is the cheapest type, though was common in luxury watches in the mid to late 20th century. Acrylic scratches easily, but it won’t shatter. Since the 1990s, sapphire crystal has become the standard for high-end watches. It is very hard and therefore resistant to scratches, but like mineral glass it can shatter, with shards then causing damage.
The greatest watchmaker of the late 20th century was the Englishman George Daniels, who died in 2011. He made his signature watches entirely alone, by hand, manufacturing nearly all the components from scratch. He even made his own tools (apart from the big ones). He made 23 pocket watches and 4 wristwatches, plus a run of 58 in collaboration, along with a couple of clocks and some prototypes and conversions. His are the first mechanical watches to be more accurate than standard quartz ones.
Daniels’s big contribution to the wider world was the co-axial escapement, which he developed in the 1970s. This is not dissimilar to the lever escapement but has three pallets, cutting out the vast majority of friction that comes from the pallets sliding against the escape wheel. This removes the need for oil, which thickens over time and so can be a real problem. But he had real trouble interesting the Swiss in it. Patek Philippe were too snobbish to touch it – in the end, Omega adopted the co-axial escapement for their high-end models, but only after years of their own testing.
A more standard modern mechanical watch – a Rolex or similar – is accurate to about 2 seconds per day.
Rolex moved to Geneva just after the war, for tax reasons. They then set to work on one of the main problems to plague watches hitherto: how to keep water, dust, dirt and perspiration away from the movement. Their solution came in 1926: the Rolex Oyster case, an updated version of which is still their basic model today. The Oyster screws down instead of hinging, making it airtight albeit annoyingly hard to open. The difficult bit was sealing around the crown, for which they had to buy in a patented solution. Soon after, someone swam the Channel with a Rolex Oyster, which continued ticking merrily.
The other really common cause of watch breakage was from them being dropped. The most vulnerable bit is the fragile pivots that hold the relatively heavy balance wheel. The Incabloc shock protection system was invented in 1934, but took a couple of decades to become widespread. This mounts the pivot jewels on lyre-shaped springs, allowing them some room to travel without damage. Other, more powerful systems have been developed since, and practically all modern wristwatches have some kind of water resistance and some kind of shock protection.
Another key reliability issue came from the mainspring. Traditionally they were made of carbon steel, which could rust, would lose elasticity over time, and could easily break, potentially causing severe damage to the rest of the movement. The Elgin Company in America developed a far better alloy material in the 1940s, and over the following decade alloy (or “white metal”) mainsprings became universal. They are practically unbreakable, have a high elastic limit, and are non-magnetic.
Magnetism is indeed the other external force that can severely affect a mechanical watch. Only certain specialist watches (see Sports watches) are fully able to cope with it, but there has been a general move towards materials that are more anti-magnetic. One that has entered use only in the 21st century is silicon, which is also light, hard and low-friction. Despite some doubts over its long-term reliability, Patek Philippe have invested heavily in it.
One of the most fundamental issues with mechanical watches is the need to wind them every day. The average power reserve for a mechanical watch is 42 hours, so you don’t have to wind at exactly the same time each day, but you can’t leave it a full two days. Depending on your point of view, winding is either a pleasure or a chore. Breguet invented an automatic winding mechanism for pocket watches. His original design was impractical, but others improved on it and he went on to make quite a few automatic watches.
Automatics were nonetheless rare until the modern mechanism was invented by John Harwood in 1923 and then improved by Rolex, becoming the Rolex Oyster Perpetual in 1930. (Note: the Perpetual refers to the winding, not a perpetual calendar.) This mechanism consists of a fan-shaped rotor that swings round as you move your wrist, charging the mainspring. A safety catch prevents the mainspring becoming overwound. Rolex’s motivation at the time was actually linked more to their desire for water resistance: as the crown was the weak point, they wanted to minimise the amount it got touched.
The majority of modern mechanical wristwatches are automatics. But not all, and indeed quite a few extremely expensive ones are manual wind. The automatic isn’t a perfect solution: you have to be wearing the watch maybe 10 hours a day on weekdays for it to get enough power, especially if you’re just sitting at a desk all that time. It also adds to the thickness of the watch. Some very expensive contemporary watches have been developed that have much longer power reserves, from a few days up to over a month. They do it by having very long mainsprings, and in the extreme cases multiple going barrels with special winders, but at the cost of being really big and heavy.
The crystal of a watch is the transparent bit that protects the dial. There are three possible materials. Mineral glass is the oldest type: this is glass that has had some kind of heat or chemical treatment to protect it from scratches. Acrylic is a plastic. It is the cheapest type, though was common in luxury watches in the mid to late 20th century. Acrylic scratches easily, but it won’t shatter. Since the 1990s, sapphire crystal has become the standard for high-end watches. It is very hard and therefore resistant to scratches, but like mineral glass it can shatter, with shards then causing damage.
The greatest watchmaker of the late 20th century was the Englishman George Daniels, who died in 2011. He made his signature watches entirely alone, by hand, manufacturing nearly all the components from scratch. He even made his own tools (apart from the big ones). He made 23 pocket watches and 4 wristwatches, plus a run of 58 in collaboration, along with a couple of clocks and some prototypes and conversions. His are the first mechanical watches to be more accurate than standard quartz ones.
Daniels’s big contribution to the wider world was the co-axial escapement, which he developed in the 1970s. This is not dissimilar to the lever escapement but has three pallets, cutting out the vast majority of friction that comes from the pallets sliding against the escape wheel. This removes the need for oil, which thickens over time and so can be a real problem. But he had real trouble interesting the Swiss in it. Patek Philippe were too snobbish to touch it – in the end, Omega adopted the co-axial escapement for their high-end models, but only after years of their own testing.
A more standard modern mechanical watch – a Rolex or similar – is accurate to about 2 seconds per day.
Part 20: Dress and sports watches
Modern wristwatches can be categorised in different ways, but to keep things simple we’ll split them in two. Dress watches are more for evening wear or special occasions. They usually have precious metal (or faux precious metal) cases, possibly adorned with diamonds and other jewels, tend to be on leather straps, and prioritise elegance over resilience. Sports watches are more rugged, sometimes being designed to cope with specific harsh conditions, and so tend to be steel and on bracelets.
Dive watches are perhaps the most important sub-category of sports watches. They are a step on from general water resistance, being actually intended to operate underwater. Diving is of course one situation where accurate timing really is a matter of life and death, and attempts to make individual watches that could operate underwater, e.g. via a pouch, go back a long way, to the 17th century even. But mass-produced dive watches only appeared in the 1950s, with for example the Rolex Submariner.
As well as being strongly resistant to water and pressure, dive watches have big, luminous dial markers, a rotating bezel so you can keep track of how much air you have left, and protuberances on either side of the crown to prevent it catching on a rock and snapping off. Some of the most serious dive watches have a valve to release air out of the case during decompression.
Makers have traditionally used a rather misleading scale of water resistance. “Water resistant to 30m” means splash resistant, no more, and it needs to be at least 200m for you to safely consider it anything like waterproof. In the 1990s these were superseded by ISO standards, but if those are passed the maker may still label it with the old scale equivalent.
In the early 20th century, many clock and watch dials were painted with radium, which combined with phosphor made them glow in the dark. (Substances emit light when energy from radioactive decay hits them, but in only a few cases is that light on the visible spectrum.) Radium has a 1,600 year half-life, and the radiation it emits can be dangerous, especially if the crystal is removed and/or the paint flakes. Many of the young women who painted the dials became ill from licking the brushes. Later on, radium was replaced by tritium, which has a half-life of 12 years and emits less penetrating radiation. Tritium dials are basically safe, and are still used on military watches, while some fire exit signs also use tritium. But the glow only lasts a few years, and tritium is expensive as it has to come from a nuclear reactor. Nowadays, glowing watch dials tend to be the non-radioactive type that just release light they’ve previously absorbed: this is a form of general fluorescence, which converts ultraviolet light into visible light.
A few especially anti-magnetic models of watch have been made, for use by scientists and engineers. The Rolex Milgauss came out in 1956, and was recently reintroduced into the range. Its movement is inside a miniature Faraday cage, and it has a lightning-shaped second hand. Other makers have since produced even more strongly anti-magnetic models.
Aviation is another area where timekeeping is extremely important, and pilots today still wear mechanical watches, in the event that all electronic instrumentation malfunctions. This was a reality on the Apollo 13 mission, when the crew had to time a critical 14-second burn of fuel on their Omega Speedmaster chronographs. Pilot’s watches don’t have specific technical requirements the way dive watches do, but tend to be large and readable, accurate, and have complications like chronographs, tachymeters, and dual time functions.
Breitling, founded in 1884, specialises in aviation-style watches. Breitling watches are made in Switzerland with Swiss components, but those components are mostly not made in-house, coming instead from ETA and Valjoux. ETA is the big maker of generic components: the result of many mergers over the decades, it is owned by the Swatch Group. That itself is a huge conglomerate, the result of the contraction and restructuring of the Swiss watch industry. It makes Swatches, of course, but also owns Omega, Longines, Tissot, Breguet, and several other brands. Valjoux is also owned by ETA, but is named separately because of its role as the main maker of chronograph movements. Going back to Breitling, this is how they are able to offer impressive-looking, complicated watches at a relatively low price point.
Breitling’s most gung-ho model of all is the Emergency, which is a quartz watch that has an emergency radio beacon built in. It is known to have saved multiple lives, in both military and civilian situations, although you do have to sign to say that if you activate it, you will pay for whatever is sent to your rescue.
Dive watches are perhaps the most important sub-category of sports watches. They are a step on from general water resistance, being actually intended to operate underwater. Diving is of course one situation where accurate timing really is a matter of life and death, and attempts to make individual watches that could operate underwater, e.g. via a pouch, go back a long way, to the 17th century even. But mass-produced dive watches only appeared in the 1950s, with for example the Rolex Submariner.
As well as being strongly resistant to water and pressure, dive watches have big, luminous dial markers, a rotating bezel so you can keep track of how much air you have left, and protuberances on either side of the crown to prevent it catching on a rock and snapping off. Some of the most serious dive watches have a valve to release air out of the case during decompression.
Makers have traditionally used a rather misleading scale of water resistance. “Water resistant to 30m” means splash resistant, no more, and it needs to be at least 200m for you to safely consider it anything like waterproof. In the 1990s these were superseded by ISO standards, but if those are passed the maker may still label it with the old scale equivalent.
In the early 20th century, many clock and watch dials were painted with radium, which combined with phosphor made them glow in the dark. (Substances emit light when energy from radioactive decay hits them, but in only a few cases is that light on the visible spectrum.) Radium has a 1,600 year half-life, and the radiation it emits can be dangerous, especially if the crystal is removed and/or the paint flakes. Many of the young women who painted the dials became ill from licking the brushes. Later on, radium was replaced by tritium, which has a half-life of 12 years and emits less penetrating radiation. Tritium dials are basically safe, and are still used on military watches, while some fire exit signs also use tritium. But the glow only lasts a few years, and tritium is expensive as it has to come from a nuclear reactor. Nowadays, glowing watch dials tend to be the non-radioactive type that just release light they’ve previously absorbed: this is a form of general fluorescence, which converts ultraviolet light into visible light.
A few especially anti-magnetic models of watch have been made, for use by scientists and engineers. The Rolex Milgauss came out in 1956, and was recently reintroduced into the range. Its movement is inside a miniature Faraday cage, and it has a lightning-shaped second hand. Other makers have since produced even more strongly anti-magnetic models.
Aviation is another area where timekeeping is extremely important, and pilots today still wear mechanical watches, in the event that all electronic instrumentation malfunctions. This was a reality on the Apollo 13 mission, when the crew had to time a critical 14-second burn of fuel on their Omega Speedmaster chronographs. Pilot’s watches don’t have specific technical requirements the way dive watches do, but tend to be large and readable, accurate, and have complications like chronographs, tachymeters, and dual time functions.
Breitling, founded in 1884, specialises in aviation-style watches. Breitling watches are made in Switzerland with Swiss components, but those components are mostly not made in-house, coming instead from ETA and Valjoux. ETA is the big maker of generic components: the result of many mergers over the decades, it is owned by the Swatch Group. That itself is a huge conglomerate, the result of the contraction and restructuring of the Swiss watch industry. It makes Swatches, of course, but also owns Omega, Longines, Tissot, Breguet, and several other brands. Valjoux is also owned by ETA, but is named separately because of its role as the main maker of chronograph movements. Going back to Breitling, this is how they are able to offer impressive-looking, complicated watches at a relatively low price point.
Breitling’s most gung-ho model of all is the Emergency, which is a quartz watch that has an emergency radio beacon built in. It is known to have saved multiple lives, in both military and civilian situations, although you do have to sign to say that if you activate it, you will pay for whatever is sent to your rescue.
Part 21: Complications
Complications have already been mentioned several times, but now to explain them in a bit more detail. Complications are anything a watch does beyond telling the time, although technically they have to be time-related, so functions like thermometers and barometers don’t count.
Complications can be divided into three main categories. The first is astronomical. A date function is the most common, and can be found on most Rolexes. But these are just the simple date function: five times a year, when the month doesn’t go to 31, it has to be adjusted manually. Annual calendars are better: they handle the 30s automatically, so only have to be adjusted once a year, at the end of February. Perpetual calendars are the best of all: they handle Februaries and leap years, so only have to be adjusted once a century, when there is a blip in the leap year cycle. However, a perpetual calendar requires an awful lot of gears, making it one of the most premium complications, generally only found in watches costing well over £10,000. Patek Phillippe were the first to produce the perpetual calendar in a retail model, and it remains one of their specialties.
Other astronomical complications explore the differences between the cycles of the heavens and the practical measures of time humans have adopted. Exact mechanical conversion between these is actually impossible, because the ratios are irrational numbers. But you can get close enough to be useable. One example of these is the traditional moon phase dial. Another is an “equation of time”. This shows the difference between true solar time, where the noon-to-noon period varies because of the elliptical orbit and tilted axis, and the regularised day length we use. The difference is plus to minus 15 minutes over the year, being biggest in February and November. This complication is of mild interest, but has almost no practical use.
The second category is timing complications, a key one being the chronograph. This is a fancy word for a stopwatch that is combined with a clock. The first production chronograph was created by Nicolas Mathieu Rieussec in 1821, at the behest of King Louis XVIII. Its purpose was to time horse races, rather than it just being first one to the tape wins. Once you have times, you have records that can be chased and broken.
These early chronographs literally wrote a line on paper with ink, hence the “graph” part of the name. (In 2013, it was found that Louis Moinet had invented a chronograph in 1816, one that is actually much more like the modern device. But his was only intended for calibrating astronomical instruments, not for timing real-world events.)
The modern chronograph has two or three subsidiary dials, for split seconds, seconds and minutes, and two pushers. The pusher above the main crown starts and stops the chronograph, while the one below resets it. There are two main chronograph mechanisms: the column wheel, which is shaped like a castle turret, and the coulisse lever, which is a heart-shaped cam. The column wheel is smoother, but less robust and rarer.
Automatic chronographs were developed in the late 1960s. Because chronographs are difficult to make, until recently it was pretty much only Valjoux who made them, and they supplied everyone else. Most modern chronographs use the Valjoux 7750 automatic (coulisse) mechanism, which was developed in 1973. There are several types of more advanced chronograph, one example being the flyback chronograph, which immediately keeps going when reset rather than having to stop and start. A tachymeter is a scale that in conjunction with a chronograph allows rapid calculation of speed.
Another type of timing complication relates to travel. A dual-time or GMT watch has two hour hands, the reserve one staying the same when you adjust the watch on arrival in a new time zone. The world time watch, invented back in the 1930s, is more sophisticated. It has a ring with city names and a 24-hour ring. These both jump forward, as does the hour hand by one, when you press a button to change the reference city. This allows you to reference all time zones at once, and as they often have very attractive world maps in the centre, they are a particularly desirable complication. One disadvantage of the world timer is that the basic clock in the middle can only be rather small.
The third type of complication is striking mechanisms, such as passing strike, repeaters, alarms, and grande and petite sonnerie chiming. These are all very common in clocks: which have to have some kind of bell to count as a clock rather than a timepiece. Breguet invented the gong-spring as a more compact and melodious version of the bell, after which striking mechanisms in pocket watches became quite common. And digital watches in their heyday were notorious for their constant beeping. But striking complications in mechanical wristwatches are much more rare and special, because of the difficulty of fitting a powerful enough striking mechanism within that small space.
A grand complication watch has at least one complication from each of those categories.
The tourbillon was another invention of Breguet’s. Not strictly a complication, its purpose was to increase accuracy by putting the balance wheel inside a constantly rotating cage, so as to compensate for it being held at an angle. However, Breguet was thinking of pocket watches that hung at a constant vertical angle. On wristwatches, there is no evidence whatsoever that tourbillons increase accuracy. But they do look cool, and as they are very fiddly to make, they are another feature only found in really high-end watches.
Automata are another feature that aren’t a complication as such, but are found on certain very expensive and showy mechanical wristwatches.
Complications can be divided into three main categories. The first is astronomical. A date function is the most common, and can be found on most Rolexes. But these are just the simple date function: five times a year, when the month doesn’t go to 31, it has to be adjusted manually. Annual calendars are better: they handle the 30s automatically, so only have to be adjusted once a year, at the end of February. Perpetual calendars are the best of all: they handle Februaries and leap years, so only have to be adjusted once a century, when there is a blip in the leap year cycle. However, a perpetual calendar requires an awful lot of gears, making it one of the most premium complications, generally only found in watches costing well over £10,000. Patek Phillippe were the first to produce the perpetual calendar in a retail model, and it remains one of their specialties.
Other astronomical complications explore the differences between the cycles of the heavens and the practical measures of time humans have adopted. Exact mechanical conversion between these is actually impossible, because the ratios are irrational numbers. But you can get close enough to be useable. One example of these is the traditional moon phase dial. Another is an “equation of time”. This shows the difference between true solar time, where the noon-to-noon period varies because of the elliptical orbit and tilted axis, and the regularised day length we use. The difference is plus to minus 15 minutes over the year, being biggest in February and November. This complication is of mild interest, but has almost no practical use.
The second category is timing complications, a key one being the chronograph. This is a fancy word for a stopwatch that is combined with a clock. The first production chronograph was created by Nicolas Mathieu Rieussec in 1821, at the behest of King Louis XVIII. Its purpose was to time horse races, rather than it just being first one to the tape wins. Once you have times, you have records that can be chased and broken.
These early chronographs literally wrote a line on paper with ink, hence the “graph” part of the name. (In 2013, it was found that Louis Moinet had invented a chronograph in 1816, one that is actually much more like the modern device. But his was only intended for calibrating astronomical instruments, not for timing real-world events.)
The modern chronograph has two or three subsidiary dials, for split seconds, seconds and minutes, and two pushers. The pusher above the main crown starts and stops the chronograph, while the one below resets it. There are two main chronograph mechanisms: the column wheel, which is shaped like a castle turret, and the coulisse lever, which is a heart-shaped cam. The column wheel is smoother, but less robust and rarer.
Automatic chronographs were developed in the late 1960s. Because chronographs are difficult to make, until recently it was pretty much only Valjoux who made them, and they supplied everyone else. Most modern chronographs use the Valjoux 7750 automatic (coulisse) mechanism, which was developed in 1973. There are several types of more advanced chronograph, one example being the flyback chronograph, which immediately keeps going when reset rather than having to stop and start. A tachymeter is a scale that in conjunction with a chronograph allows rapid calculation of speed.
Another type of timing complication relates to travel. A dual-time or GMT watch has two hour hands, the reserve one staying the same when you adjust the watch on arrival in a new time zone. The world time watch, invented back in the 1930s, is more sophisticated. It has a ring with city names and a 24-hour ring. These both jump forward, as does the hour hand by one, when you press a button to change the reference city. This allows you to reference all time zones at once, and as they often have very attractive world maps in the centre, they are a particularly desirable complication. One disadvantage of the world timer is that the basic clock in the middle can only be rather small.
The third type of complication is striking mechanisms, such as passing strike, repeaters, alarms, and grande and petite sonnerie chiming. These are all very common in clocks: which have to have some kind of bell to count as a clock rather than a timepiece. Breguet invented the gong-spring as a more compact and melodious version of the bell, after which striking mechanisms in pocket watches became quite common. And digital watches in their heyday were notorious for their constant beeping. But striking complications in mechanical wristwatches are much more rare and special, because of the difficulty of fitting a powerful enough striking mechanism within that small space.
A grand complication watch has at least one complication from each of those categories.
The tourbillon was another invention of Breguet’s. Not strictly a complication, its purpose was to increase accuracy by putting the balance wheel inside a constantly rotating cage, so as to compensate for it being held at an angle. However, Breguet was thinking of pocket watches that hung at a constant vertical angle. On wristwatches, there is no evidence whatsoever that tourbillons increase accuracy. But they do look cool, and as they are very fiddly to make, they are another feature only found in really high-end watches.
Automata are another feature that aren’t a complication as such, but are found on certain very expensive and showy mechanical wristwatches.
Part 22: Contemporary brands
Geneva is the centre of the global luxury watch market
On the internet, there are very many “this brand vs. that brand” discussions, plus various attempts to list brands in a hierarchy. These are understandably all controversial: for a start, are you comparing their entry-level models or their top of the range pieces, or some kind of average? And by prestige, does that mean it would impress a watch nerd or impress the man on the street? This is not an attempt to answer those questions once and for all, but just to give a sense of the range that is out there.
To start at the pinnacle of rarity and craftsmanship … George Daniels took on one apprentice, who became his designated successor and took over his workshop on the Isle of Man. His name is Roger W. Smith. He has a small handful of assistants, and together they produce 10 watches per year, making every component from scratch except for the leather strap and a couple of the springs. They can spend a week labouring over a part that the Swiss companies would stamp out in two seconds. Prices start at £85,000, and there is a very long waiting list.
There are a few more of these independent watchmakers. The other name that really stands out is Philippe Dufour, who is Swiss and has been making watches since the 1970s. He used to have assistants, and was then producing 16-18 watches per year, but they all left and he’s now just pottering around with the odd project on his own. He doesn’t make quite as many of his own components as Smith – and indeed was a pioneer in the use of CAD software – but is particularly feted for his very high standard of finishing (polishing) on each bit. He was also the first to make grande and petite sonnerie wristwatches: the grande sonnerie is even harder to make than a minute repeater, because while both have two barrels, for the repeater you wind it separately for each use, but for the grande sonnerie they wind together, and the second barrel must have enough power to chime each quarter for as long as the first barrel is going.
Next come the companies that produce thousands or tens of thousands of high-end watches per year, i.e. they put in a lot of handwork, but definitely use computers and big machines as well. Chief among these is Patek Philippe, which makes about 50,000 per year, and are one of the few luxury brands that are still family-owned. Nearly all the records for watches sold at auction or by private sale are held by Patek: although Patek themselves are one of the chief buyers, purchasing pieces for their museum. The Henry Graves Supercomplication, a 1933 double-sided pocket watch with 24 complications, is the most valuable timepiece ever sold at auction. It is in superb condition because it was hardly ever used – note that its relative price then was far less than a similar timepiece would cost new today. The wristwatch record is also held by Patek: for a WW2-era model that is actually in steel, which is much rarer than the same model in gold.
What is sometimes called the Holy Trinity of Swiss watchmaking consists of Patek Philippe, Vacheron Constantin, and Audemars Piguet. Vacheron Constantin date back to 1755, making them the oldest continuously operating watchmaker, and they produce around 20,000 watches per year. They recently surpassed Patek for the record of most complications in a watch – with 57, for another massive, double-faced pocket watch. Audemars Piguet also have a long history. They make around 32,000 watches per year, and tend to go for unusual shapes of dial: octagons and ellipses.
There are various other Swiss brands that are on a similar level:
An important category of non-Swiss brands is high-end jewellers who also produce watches: principally Cartier, Bulgari, Harry Winston, and Van Cleef & Arpels. These have tended to put other people’s movements in their own cases, and as such the purists are a bit sniffy about them, although with recent mergers and acquisitions, they are building up their in-house capabilities. That said, they have contributed a fair amount to watchmaking. Cartier were in their heyday just when wristwatches were taking off, and their iconic rectangular design was based on the shape of a WW1 tank. More recently, Van Cleef & Arpels, working with a specialist in astronomical complications, came out with the Midnight Planétarium, which is one of the most impressive timepieces to be a production model rather than a one-off. The five visible planets, represented by gems, move around the dial just as they are in the sky: Saturn takes 29 years to complete one revolution. It’s not so good for telling the time of day though, as it only shows the hour.
Next come the third big sports watch brands: Rolex, Omega, and Breitling.
Rolex are the biggest luxury watch brand in terms of production: together with their Tudor line (until recently, non-Rolex movements in Rolex cases and bracelets) they make about 1 million per year. Omega have tried to match Rolex in many aspects of their style and range. As well as their impressive association with the moon landings, they have been official timekeepers for the Olympics since 1932 and for James Bond since 1995. As noted, Breitling is the primary maker of aviation watches, with a few diving models thrown in for good measure.
After that come the brands that are “not quite Rolex”, such as Longines, Tag Heuer, and Montblanc. Then come the fashion brands, such as Armani, Versace and Gucci. Of the Japanese names, Seiko is generally the most prestigious, while Tissot is an entry-level Swiss brand. After that, you’re down to the bottom end of mechanical, such as some Swatch and Citizen, and then quartz and digital, e.g. Casio – as well as all those brands that are designed to look like Rolex etc. from a distance, but are sold for a fraction of the price.
To start at the pinnacle of rarity and craftsmanship … George Daniels took on one apprentice, who became his designated successor and took over his workshop on the Isle of Man. His name is Roger W. Smith. He has a small handful of assistants, and together they produce 10 watches per year, making every component from scratch except for the leather strap and a couple of the springs. They can spend a week labouring over a part that the Swiss companies would stamp out in two seconds. Prices start at £85,000, and there is a very long waiting list.
There are a few more of these independent watchmakers. The other name that really stands out is Philippe Dufour, who is Swiss and has been making watches since the 1970s. He used to have assistants, and was then producing 16-18 watches per year, but they all left and he’s now just pottering around with the odd project on his own. He doesn’t make quite as many of his own components as Smith – and indeed was a pioneer in the use of CAD software – but is particularly feted for his very high standard of finishing (polishing) on each bit. He was also the first to make grande and petite sonnerie wristwatches: the grande sonnerie is even harder to make than a minute repeater, because while both have two barrels, for the repeater you wind it separately for each use, but for the grande sonnerie they wind together, and the second barrel must have enough power to chime each quarter for as long as the first barrel is going.
Next come the companies that produce thousands or tens of thousands of high-end watches per year, i.e. they put in a lot of handwork, but definitely use computers and big machines as well. Chief among these is Patek Philippe, which makes about 50,000 per year, and are one of the few luxury brands that are still family-owned. Nearly all the records for watches sold at auction or by private sale are held by Patek: although Patek themselves are one of the chief buyers, purchasing pieces for their museum. The Henry Graves Supercomplication, a 1933 double-sided pocket watch with 24 complications, is the most valuable timepiece ever sold at auction. It is in superb condition because it was hardly ever used – note that its relative price then was far less than a similar timepiece would cost new today. The wristwatch record is also held by Patek: for a WW2-era model that is actually in steel, which is much rarer than the same model in gold.
What is sometimes called the Holy Trinity of Swiss watchmaking consists of Patek Philippe, Vacheron Constantin, and Audemars Piguet. Vacheron Constantin date back to 1755, making them the oldest continuously operating watchmaker, and they produce around 20,000 watches per year. They recently surpassed Patek for the record of most complications in a watch – with 57, for another massive, double-faced pocket watch. Audemars Piguet also have a long history. They make around 32,000 watches per year, and tend to go for unusual shapes of dial: octagons and ellipses.
There are various other Swiss brands that are on a similar level:
- Piaget, not to be confused with AP, are particularly known for ultra-thin movements, the Altiplano being their most famous model.
- Jaeger-Lecoultre invented the second keyless winding mechanism after Patek’s, and also invented the reversing watch, whereby you can flip the main part over to protect it from dust and sand, perhaps with a personalised engraving on that reverse side.
- Blancpain date way back to 1735, making them the oldest watchmaker still in existence, albeit with a couple of pauses along the way. They produced the first modern diver’s watch, the Fifty Fathoms (made for French special forces) in 1953. They also trumpet that they’ve never made a quartz watch and never will.
- Girard-Perregaux produced the first ever commercial wristwatch, for the German navy back in 1880. They are now particularly known for their world time watches.
- Ulysse Nardin specialise in marine chronometers and diver’s watches.
- Jaques Droz date back to a clockmaker’s workshop founded in 1738, and are now known for their elaborate dials, which include painting, enamelling and automata.
- Breguet is now the premium brand of the Swatch group, and they make watches in the traditional Breguet style, often including tourbillons.
- A very different Swiss watchmaker is Richard Mille. They make just over 3,000 watches per year, and while the company was only founded in 1999 it has become well known for its very modern and very expensive designs. They adapt materials and processes from the most innovative sectors of manufacturing, such as Formula 1 and aerospace, and have formed associations with sports figures like Rafael Nadal. As you’d expect from all this talk of sport, their watches are exceptionally light.
An important category of non-Swiss brands is high-end jewellers who also produce watches: principally Cartier, Bulgari, Harry Winston, and Van Cleef & Arpels. These have tended to put other people’s movements in their own cases, and as such the purists are a bit sniffy about them, although with recent mergers and acquisitions, they are building up their in-house capabilities. That said, they have contributed a fair amount to watchmaking. Cartier were in their heyday just when wristwatches were taking off, and their iconic rectangular design was based on the shape of a WW1 tank. More recently, Van Cleef & Arpels, working with a specialist in astronomical complications, came out with the Midnight Planétarium, which is one of the most impressive timepieces to be a production model rather than a one-off. The five visible planets, represented by gems, move around the dial just as they are in the sky: Saturn takes 29 years to complete one revolution. It’s not so good for telling the time of day though, as it only shows the hour.
Next come the third big sports watch brands: Rolex, Omega, and Breitling.
Rolex are the biggest luxury watch brand in terms of production: together with their Tudor line (until recently, non-Rolex movements in Rolex cases and bracelets) they make about 1 million per year. Omega have tried to match Rolex in many aspects of their style and range. As well as their impressive association with the moon landings, they have been official timekeepers for the Olympics since 1932 and for James Bond since 1995. As noted, Breitling is the primary maker of aviation watches, with a few diving models thrown in for good measure.
After that come the brands that are “not quite Rolex”, such as Longines, Tag Heuer, and Montblanc. Then come the fashion brands, such as Armani, Versace and Gucci. Of the Japanese names, Seiko is generally the most prestigious, while Tissot is an entry-level Swiss brand. After that, you’re down to the bottom end of mechanical, such as some Swatch and Citizen, and then quartz and digital, e.g. Casio – as well as all those brands that are designed to look like Rolex etc. from a distance, but are sold for a fraction of the price.
Part 23: The future
The Swiss watch industry has recently gone through a three-year slump, though some claim it is on the way up again. Multiple factors are involved, but some do suggest that many of the premium brands are overpriced. It’s one thing to charge £100,000 for a watch if a world-renowned craftsman spent a year making it, but for something that was industrially produced that is hard to justify (even if you are “only looking after it for the next generation”).
At the opposite end, the picture is also bleak. With the ubiquity of smartphones, the quartz watch is more or less obsolete. However, the overall market for wrist-worn devices, including things like fitness trackers, seems to be in good shape.
So perhaps timekeeping is again at a point of transition. Famously, villages and towns used to all be on their own time – people went by the church or town hall clock, which was calibrated to local solar time – and that only got standardised with the arrival of the railways. On the one hand uniformity has become ever more important, with financial transactions and satellite navigation depending on milliseconds of accuracy. But on the other hand, there is a greater understanding that standardising time and routines, away from solar time, has had a negative impact on human health and wellbeing. The devices we use for timekeeping may therefore become more precise and interconnected, or alternatively more individual and characterful. Whether any will last as long as Stonehenge has done is a whole different question.
At the opposite end, the picture is also bleak. With the ubiquity of smartphones, the quartz watch is more or less obsolete. However, the overall market for wrist-worn devices, including things like fitness trackers, seems to be in good shape.
So perhaps timekeeping is again at a point of transition. Famously, villages and towns used to all be on their own time – people went by the church or town hall clock, which was calibrated to local solar time – and that only got standardised with the arrival of the railways. On the one hand uniformity has become ever more important, with financial transactions and satellite navigation depending on milliseconds of accuracy. But on the other hand, there is a greater understanding that standardising time and routines, away from solar time, has had a negative impact on human health and wellbeing. The devices we use for timekeeping may therefore become more precise and interconnected, or alternatively more individual and characterful. Whether any will last as long as Stonehenge has done is a whole different question.
