Aventi Newsletter Issue 8. Watchmaking History Part 1: Times, Styles and Perspectives

There has probably never been another time in history like now, when the passion for traditional watchmaking is reaching so many layers of the public globally.?

Contrary to the predictions of the prophets of doom, traditional #watchmaking has managed to survive, albeit through various adjustments, epochal transformations. A couple of the last were the Quartz Revolution of the 1970s and the introduction of smartwatches during the Noughties, which were supposed to lead to the extinction of classical watchmaking, with our #timepieces replaced by small wrist computers. The premise would have been there, but as it is now evident, this did not happen.

#Smartwatches have gained their place in the market but eroding it mostly to the niche of #fashion watches and those on the low end, without affecting the prestige of high-end watches. Into this profoundly changed situation, other factors are influencing, even in important ways, how watches are chosen and worn.

Yet, if we read history, we can find that watchmaking has had many other similar "crises" during its roughly 500 years of existence: in several cases there have been situations or technical innovations that have abruptly changed the course of the trends of the moment, and caused watchmaking production, which is pointless without the market, to take another direction.

So, let us start this two-part narration of historical trends and profonde changes in horology from a historical point of view, examining what kind of changes and innovations watches have endured over the years in order to gain an informed perspective about what they will become.

The First Great Watchmaking Powerhouse: England?

The first watches originated in Germany in the 1500s, but thanks to the discovery of the hairspring by Hooke and Huygens, and the technical innovations of De Duillers who first used #jewels in movements, British watches around the end of the 1600s quickly became the gold standard of world watchmaking.

The technical innovations devised by the likes of Tompion, Graham, Harrison, Mudge, and Arnold laid the groundwork to make English production unmatched and unassailable for a long time, at least until 1750.

But English production harbored within its manufacturing system the germs of its obsolescence. Despite daring innovations, most production continued without changing one iota, with clocks based on the verge fusée system that required a complex, two-story, thick structure that required highly skilled labor and could not be mass-produced.

An almost ironic fact, in the very nation that would make the Industrial Revolution one of the most important historical moments of the modern era.

France’s Turning Point: The Simplification?

It was with Lépine that a first major innovation took place that ended the dominance of English watchmaking. The Parisian watchmaker, to whom the famous Breguet was an heir, introduced the concept of the #caliber, that is, a self-contained #mechanical unit that was mounted inside a case and marked the hours. The French caliber used by Lépine, moreover, used a different escapement, mainly of the virgule, duplex or cylinder type, and thus developed on a single plane, practically halving the thickness of the watch.

These new, sleek #timepieces entered the market and quickly became trendy - so much so that personalities like George Washington himself begged his ambassador in Paris to buy one.

Lépine's legacy was continued in the early nineteenth century by his former apprentice, Breguet, who proved to be an outstanding innovator and ante litteram "marketer," helping to invent, improve, and popularize watchmaking systems and complications that made history, among which we find the automatic winding system and the #tourbillon.

The 1800s: The Influence of American Watchmaking and the Democratization of Time?

Despite technical innovations, watchmaking had remained a niche for the wealthy. A common laborer would never have had the opportunity to afford a pocket watch: but this changed dramatically after the innovations brought by American watchmaking and specifically, using #micromechanics principles imported into watchmaking from the #military industry.?

From the beginning of the nineteenth century there was a flourishing of small manufacturers in the United States, some of them still in the market today (such as Waltham and Hamilton), who relied on a fundamental principle, namely, that of mass-produced replaceable parts, borrowed from the experience of the arms industries that would later see widespread use during the War of Secession.

The ”Springfield Principle”, applied industrially by pioneers such as Dennison and Fasoldt, made it possible to create not only accurate watches that were mass-produced, but a system of mass manufacturing that would later be applied in other parts of the world, revolutionizing the industry. Men like Florentine Ariosto Jones would later export it to #Switzerland of all places, initially with little success, creating innovative companies such as the International Watch Company - that is, IWC - around 1870.

It was also during this period that Frederic Roskopf launched his "proletarian watch," a low-cost timepiece driven by a simplified pin-lever escapement that could finally be purchased by the lower classes. All it took to buy a Roskopf watch was two weeks of a worker's pay - and after a stunted beginning, as the traditional Swiss watch industry boycotted this particular development, watches with the Roskopf system became so popular that anyone could afford one, like the famous "one dollar watches" produced in the U.S. in the late 19th century.

From an aesthetic point of view, pocket watches of the late 19th century had unambiguous characteristics: the case was made of precious materials such as gold and silver, or coated by plating, or again, executed in alloys that resembled precious materials, such as #argentan.

The dials were simple, generally executed in white enamel, on which painted numerals stood out. Watches intended for a female audience echoed those for men but were smaller and more ornate.

The Fashion Influx in the Early Twentieth Century?

The traditional function of the pocket watch, which had to be taken out of a pocket in order to be consulted, had now made history. Modern times demanded more practical and innovative solutions. Moreover, watches increasingly became goods that stood somewhere between a technical and a lifestyle use, that is, more than just a timepiece, but a valuable accessory indicating the style of the wearer. And thus, their increasing popularity made them subject to the evolution of fashion.

Proof of this important incursion of fashion into watchmaking is that it was a member of Parisian high society, that famous aviator named Alberto de Santos Dumont, who launched the trend of the #wristwatch.

In addition to being a pioneer of flight, Santos Dumont was a famous bon-vivant, very prominent in the society of the French capital. And his request to his friend Louis Cartier, namely, to own a watch that he could wear without fear of losing it during his reckless exploits at the controls of some flying machine made of wood and canvas, achieved an incredible result: the first "commercial" wristwatch produced in the world.?

This was, indeed, the first model of the #Cartier Santos, and the aviator liked it so much that he never parted with it, wearing it on all the social occasions he attended, and causing a stir among the well-wishers with its shape, the familiar square design with rounded corners that this model still shows today.

After this first, Louis Cartier went on to launch other models, specifically the famous Tank, created to honor General Pershing of the U.S. Expeditionary Force during World War I, released in 1917. With its rectangular shape, the Tank sanctioned a complete break with the typical gentleman's watch of the time, the round pocket watch with a gold case, secured to the wearer's vest with a chain.

And so began the first spread of wristwatches, undoubtedly more practical to wear, which represented a sort of revolution.

The "young" people of the time immediately supported the novelty, while the "old" people entrenched themselves behind habit. The result was that the elegant old pocket watches slowly went extinct, while watch companies came up with unconventional and boldly designed models. It was during those years that certain shapes debuted that later became famous on the watchmaking circuit, such as the cushion and the tonneau case, both of which were optimized to accommodate shaped movements, as well as other round calibers from more classic productions.

Round-shaped watches only came back into vogue later, around the 1930s, with the launch of rationalist models inspired by the artistic current in vogue at the time, namely the Bauhaus, of which the progenitor was undoubtedly the Patek Philippe Calatrava.

In the next edition, we’ll examine the more recent horological developments, from post-WWII to today.

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