Watches before the wrist
For several centuries after small spring-driven timepieces appeared, a watch was a pocket object, kept in a waistcoat on a chain or hung from a belt or neck. Gentlemen carried them, and the pocket watch became a symbol of punctuality and status. Making a small watch was a skilled job. By the nineteenth century, factories, notably in Switzerland and the United States, were producing watches with machine-made, interchangeable parts, and their prices fell.
Strapping one to the wrist was an old idea in a limited form. A record from 1571 describes a gift to Queen Elizabeth I of an “armlet” with a clock in it, and other small bracelet timepieces were made as curiosities. Such items were rare, costly and often more decoration than tool.
Jewelry for women
The first documented wrist watches that were made as a product were largely women’s jewelry. Abraham-Louis Breguet is often said to have made a bracelet watch for the Queen of Naples, Caroline Murat, in 1810. Later in the century, Patek Philippe is reported to have made a wristlet watch in 1868 for a Hungarian countess. Such stories are commonly repeated in watch histories, and the exact details can be hard to verify, but the pattern they describe is credible. In the later 1800s, fashionable women wore small decorative watches on bracelets, often with an ornamented case and a tiny movement.
Men in this period generally saw the wristwatch as a feminine ornament. A pocket watch looked sober and substantial; a bracelet seemed frivolous. Writers in the early twentieth century sometimes mocked the idea of men wearing one.
Soldiers and practical needs
A change started in the military. Officers needed to check the time while their hands were occupied, and fumbling in a pocket was awkward in the saddle, in a gun position or in the field. Accounts commonly mention that German naval officers were issued wrist-worn timepieces in the 1880s, though the details are debated. Wristlets with straps were also reportedly used by British officers in colonial campaigns of the 1880s and 1890s, and in the Boer War at the end of the century. They were mostly improvised by attaching a pocket watch to a leather cuff.
The First World War made the practice widespread. Coordinated artillery barrages, trench raids and timed advances relied on precise synchronization, and officers and men alike wore watches on their wrists. Manufacturers responded with purpose-built “trench watches”: sturdy cases, legible numerals with luminous paint, and sometimes a wire guard over the glass to prevent damage. When soldiers came home, they brought the habit with them, and the old objection to men’s wristwatches faded quickly. Style and function now pointed in the same direction.
Aviation and the early adopters
Early pilots had a similar need. Using a pocket watch was awkward in an open cockpit, and in the first years of powered flight pilots wanted a clear timepiece at hand. Cartier is reported to have created a watch around 1904 for the Brazilian aviator Alberto Santos-Dumont, a story often retold, though it is usually described as a custom piece and not as the start of a mass product. A model with a similar square style was sold commercially in the following years.
Square and rectangular wristwatches in the 1910s and 1920s signaled that designers were rethinking the form. A wristwatch did not have to imitate a pocket watch; it could be shaped like a piece of jewelry, a cuff, or an instrument.
Making the wristwatch durable and convenient
Several technical changes in the 1920s helped. A wristwatch is exposed to dust, sweat, knocks and water, which rarely troubled a watch in a pocket. Makers developed cases with better seals, and the first water-resistant models appeared in the middle of the decade. The English watchmaker John Harwood patented a self-winding wristwatch in the 1920s, which wound itself through the motion of the wearer’s arm. Shatter-resistant crystals and sturdier movements followed.
Small watch movements also became more accurate. By the 1930s, many wristwatches kept time as well as the best pocket watches of a generation earlier.
A mass market
During the 1920s and 1930s, sales of wristwatches rose strongly and by about the end of that period had passed those of pocket watches in many markets. The change reflected fashion, practicality and a growing appetite for personal timekeeping. Factory work, offices and schedules for trains and buses had created a world where time-keeping was part of daily life. The same reasons made time easier to check on a wrist in a crowd, on a bicycle or on a tram.
The Second World War reinforced the pattern. Armed forces on all sides issued watches in large numbers, with specifications about legibility, shock resistance and accuracy. The pilots’ watches and field watches of that era shaped designs that remain popular today.
Later chapters
After the war, the wristwatch became a gift for graduations and anniversaries, a status symbol, and a tool for divers, pilots and others. The quartz revolution of the 1970s made accurate watches cheap, and recent wearable watches have added sensors and connectivity. The arrival of smartwatch design brought the story full circle, as a bracelet with a decorative function now also carries the functions of a pocket device.
What the shift shows
The wristwatch is a nice case of a product changing identity. It started as an ornament for women, was tested by military use, and became so ordinary that its early reputation is almost forgotten. As with many inventions, the technology was not the main barrier; the barrier was what people felt a watch should be, and a practical need changed it.