Mankind has always been fascinated and obsessed with time. Even a cursory glance at some of the timepieces that have been devised lay bare this obsession: megalithic structures for tracking the regularity of the heavens, the sundial, the clepsydra (or water clock), pendulum clocks, watches, and atomic clocks. “Daylight savings time” can also be viewed as an attempt to manipulate and control time. It seems as if we feel that keeping track of time might allow us to slow or arrest its inexorable march forward. Yet, of course, we’re powerless to do so (physicists, please indulge me for a moment). This relationship between man and timepiece hasn’t changed; indeed it has grown ever closer, which the curious story of the wristwatch exemplifies well.

Most timepieces in use just before the wristwatch appeared were clocks that relied upon pendulums to drive their movements. During the 16th century wound springs were developed that could drive the movements, thus alleviating the need for a pendulum and allowing the timepiece to be greatly reduced in size. Now the relationship between time and human grew even closer as people began to keep these smaller “pocket watches” on their person rather than on the mantle. With innovation and improvement in manufacturing techniques these watches gradually became smaller, allowing them, by the nineteenth century, to be worn on the wrist.

However, it was women who wore these new “wristlet” watches; most men considered them faddish or too effeminate and continued using the manly pocket watch. It might surprise one to note that wristwatches, an accoutrement that men today have fully embraced, were once considered effeminate. But, the mechanical movements that powered watches of this time were not as rugged or as accurate as subsequent movements became. Excessive shock or movement could greatly affect the watch’s accuracy and so, since men in the 19th century were typically involved in more physical activity than women, it’s not surprising to learn that they preferred the pocket watch, which was held closer to the body.

But, how did the wristwatch come to replace the pocket watch? War, of course. We all know that necessity is the mother of invention and the impatient necessities of wartime draw forth invention like nothing else. The first documented instance of a soldier strapping a pocket watch to the wrist was during The Boer War. However, this idea didn’t truly explode onto the scene until WWI, as one of its earliest names affirms – the trench watch. The need for timekeeping on the battlefield is abundantly clear when one considers the necessity of synchronizing operations along a vast front, but why soldiers now suddenly began to put watches on their wrists “en masse” isn’t as apparent. It seems that a few enterprising officers realized that a watch on their wrist would give them free use of their hands during battle. It also reduced the chance of dropping or losing it when pulling it out of a pocket. The early aviators of WWI, who needed their hands to fly the plane, also came to the same conclusion. It isn’t an accident that some of the oldest and most familiar wristwatch brands today still use aviator wings as a logo. It became apparent that strapping a watch on the wrist was a very practical way to solve these problems and however silly or effeminate it might have looked it spread rapidly. Because these “wristlet” watches were now being worn by soldiers, well…suffice it to say that they weren’t considered effeminate any longer. Thus, watchmakers took heed of this shift in opinion and henceforward began to develop reliable, accurate, and attractive wristwatches for both sexes.