Postmodernism in Horology

A timeline of watch design, and its bizarre conclusion in the latter half of the 20th century.

The watch industry is a hundred-billion dollar contradiction. 1275AD was the first time the world saw a mechanical time-keeping instrument - a minute tracking device installed at the Salisbury Cathedral in England. Time-keeping and clock-making quickly evolved in the public eye, often hoisted high above the town for all the public to see. These instruments became central for both astronomical studies, and the social order of villages. Technology advanced steadily over the following years, culminating in large public works like the Prague Astronomical Clock, and later the first personal timekeeping devices. “Nuremberg eggs” were the first portable clocks to display hours and minutes, and were often worn around the neck on a chain. These clocks evolved into pocket watches which advanced in complexity and efficiency all the way until the turn of the 20th century.

While women’s wristwatches were in-fashion in the early 1900s, it took a major world event to truly galvanize the style. Among a number of other atrocities, World War I brought trench warfare to the battlefield for the first time. The quickening pace of battle required soldiers to tell time in a split-second, and hence “trench watches” were born. Small pocket watches were modified - lugs were welded onto the case, a strap was threaded through, and a metal cage was often secured over the glass to prepare it for combat. While the first commercially available men’s wristwatches predated the first World War (see the Cartier Santos Dumont, the Patek Philippe Gondolo), it wasn’t until after the Great War that men’s wristwatch entered the popular zeitgeist. Beyond the functional developments of timekeeping in war, the first World War even had impacts aesthetically; the original design of the Cartier Tank was based on a birds eye view of the Renault FT-17 combat tank.