Why do we wear Watches? Part 1

Mankind has always been fascinated with time and timekeeping objects, time was as important to our ancestors as it's to us, the difference is that to us its ubiquitously available. In antiquity, time-telling required some mastery for agriculture, warfare, hunting, trading and so on, as before moving on to industrialization we were all a farming, trading lot. Without dwelling much in antiquely let’s fast forward and move to the mid centuries let’s say 14th onwards and by now quite a lot has been achieved in time telling curiosities and objects, the sophistication kept on rising from tower single hour clocks to hour-minute, moving on to carriage clocks, desk clocks and eventually time moved on to pocket watches, imagine the day early men/ women carried time with them.

(Oldest.org. 2021. 10 Oldest Watches in the World | Oldest.org. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.oldest.org/technology/watches/. [Accessed 23 January 2021].

The early pocket watches were expensive objects of desire which could only be acquired by the nobility, rich landlords, or merchants. It was still far from the reach of bourgeois or the mass as they called it then. Over few centuries numerous curious minds contributed to the growth and finesse of pocket watches and many complications were added to them over time, in fact, if you look at any wristwatch now, its majority of functions have been derived from pocket watches, in a wristwatch, nothing substantial has been invented apart from case metals, material, timing accuracy, thanks to advance technologies.

The early Gentlemen would have their pocket watches tucked in the upper pocket of jackets, fashionable women wore watches as pendants and life was good overall, it was all about sophistication and good taste, daily winding, afternoon tea, cakes, and if you were early American then ranches and railroad tracks, which added immensely to time zones.

Then came in a wristwatch, so slowly that women became the first patron of watches and if any man dared to wear the watch on the wrist then would be laughed at, given the fact that macho wristwatches we wear today were termed feminine once. Well, that was perception then and much has changed since then. The world was changing very fast post-industrialization and nations needed more land, thus stated the conflict of World War One and many other reasons too not cited here. The classic gentlemen pocket watches just won’t hold up during modern and sophisticated World War One and someone came up with the pocket watch, soldered with side lugs and strap to be worn on wrist, it came handy and many soldiers chose wristwatch over the pocket and this was the beginning of a new era, which will see the rise of the wristwatch and almost extinction of pocket watch. During this era, many traditional watchmakers could not see the transformation coming, by this time we are all aware of digital transformation, well it had the same impact then with wristwatches and ones who didn’t / couldn’t / change got swept in the wind of change.

Wikipedia. 2021. History of watches - Wikipedia. [ONLINE] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_watches. [Accessed 23 January 2021].

Let’s go back to the fundamental question, why do we wear watches? Well, it’s a pandora's box and each individual has its own say and belief in this, let's start with the vintage era of wristwatches which is pre-1980’s as of now, well the history of wristwatches is still pretty new. So, the gentlemen and handsome women, the term as used in classic English, would wear manual winding watches, slowly it became automatic and thanks to the Swiss invention of quartz watch, the wristwatches were mass manufactured by Japanese and made many wrists all over the world adored by super reasonably priced wristwatches. by late 80’s anyone who had few dollars to spare could afford a wristwatch at least quartz.

The late 80’s and early 90’s was era of the takeover of the heritage Swiss watch industry and first-time investors saw watches as a money-making tool and now many group owners will tell you that it was not a bad investment idea back then. Then time over time cell phones started displaying time and suddenly time was not a luxury anymore, it was everywhere and in abundance. Then came in smartwatches and then Apple’s iconic watch. Historically Apple is termed and seen as a category destroyer, it annihilates the industry it gets into and builds from the carcass of its predecessor, remember "Nokia", it used to connect people. At one point many people moved from wearing watches to watches free wrist, a huge population of youth dropped out of wearing watches altogether, now as I write in Jan 2021, please visit any official Rolex retailer and ask for Submariner, which was actually one of first tool watch and now the worlds most coveted diver watch, the sales adviser globally will tell you its on the waitlist, and it’s the same story of many brands and many watch models, so what is happening here, how come Apple has not been able to vanquish the category of wristwatches.

To be continued ………………..