Wrist Watch

The wrist watch's origins began with the timepieces of 16^th century Europe. They were fastened to clothing or worn around the neck like a necklace. Several inches in diameter, they were a good bit bigger than the wrist-watches that we see worn today, and even then, they only had an hour hand. Rather than having a glass face, they would often have a brass cover. It was sometimes manufactured with a sort of grill-like design to it and this would allow viewing of the watches face without the wearer even opening it up. These watches had to be wound twice daily. Due to the fact that they were not accurate and so therefore unreliable, they couldn't be considered to be more of a fashion boasting than a true timepiece.

In the 17^th century, these watches evolved into the pocket watches that men traditionally owned, and glass faces were created. A key would be used when someone wanted to wind up the watch. For nearly 3 centuries, this was the chosen method of having a watch.

It was in the year 1868 that the first wrist-watch was made. Constant Girard created a concept of a wrist watch for the naval officers of Germany. German Kaiser Wilhelm I ordered 2,000 watches to be produced. This was the very 1st commercial manufacturing of wrist-watches. But at the beginning of the 20^th century, women predominantly wore wrist watches, and men did not.

Just around the turn of the century, Edmond Jaeger and Louis Cartier got to the business of inventing the first prototype of a men's wristwatch, for an aviator who had the need to time flight performances in the act, but without having to take his hands off the controls. Soldiers that fought in the First World War were known to use wrist watches to monitor time due to the fact that their hands were most often full, and they were called, "trench watches". Once this caught on, pocket watches gradually fell out of style. The self winding wrist-watch came into existence in 1923.

The 1950s and 1960s saw the invention of the electric watch and the quartz watch, both of which were important technological revolutions. This increased the accuracy of these wrist watches. Finally, in the year 1990, a radio-controlled wrist watch was created, which gave long-term accuracy to the wrist watch. Now-a-days, the wrist watch is as common as a cell phone, though cell phones have emerged as timepieces in their own right and have, at this point, out numbered wrist watches.

By CJ Pennington, of EverDream Web - aColorado SEO company.