By PHIL PATTON When the twentieth century began, few people had any need to know time exactly. For the vast majority of farm laborers, the procession of sun across the fields was time clock enough. By its end, however, time had become vital and the wristwatch both universalÑeven kids had themÑand tremendously varied in design. On a timetable listing landmarks posted at the MIT Media Lab, the wristwatch is second in succession, right after John HarrisonÕs chronometer, the device that made possible the calculation of longitude. ThatÕs a good way to think of it, here on the cusp of the century: as an early essay in portable computing. Computing time of day was once as mysterious as computing location, doing spreadsheets or word processing. And the wrist watch, for much of the twentieth century was a device as marvelous as Dick TracyÕs two way wrist radio. In a neat way, the wristwatch links the triumphs of 19th century technology to those of the 20th. The last century provided the mechanism for the wrist watch and standardized time, thanks to the railroads. It also provided the need: Taylorism literalized Benjamin FranklinÕs equation of time and money and the traditional retirement gift of a gold watch suggested that what long employment in industrial society led to was an appreciation of time. At first, the wrist watch took time seriously. Wrist watches were handed down from generation to generation as heirlooms and bestowed on children as coming of age presents. To wear a watch was to be part of the modern world. The wrist watch also developed in response the topsy turvey style of life in the new centuryÑliterally. It was linked with aviation and war and sport, where people might turn sideways and even upside down, in tanks and airplanes, and later on roller coasters and rides, beneath parachutes and down ski slopes. There was something daring about making portable such a precise, delicate machine. A marvelous a piece of miniaturization as any electronic product of our day it began as an almost sensual piece of technological virtuosity. "My woman has a movement like an Elgin watch," sang blues great Robert Johnson. Women first wore wrist watches as jewelry, novelties really, in contrast to the male watch, heavy, chained and pocketed. Philippe Patek and Breguet squabble over who made the first womanÕs wrist watch. One candidate for first was built for Caroline Murat, NapoleonÕs sister; Ingres paintings of the 1850Õs show them. Louis CartierÕs Santos and Tank watches, extremely expensive artifacts still sold today, are also embodiments of the romantic mythology of the wrist watch's beginning. The century began with such feats of aerodynamic daring as Alberto Santos-DumontÕs 1900 flight in a dirigible around the Eiffel Tower. Santos-Dumont, the story goes, asked his friend Louis Cartier for a wrist watch so he could keep his hands on the controls. The 1904 Santos was the result. Along with aviation, war brought the wristwatch to prominence. Cartier modelled his Tank watch after a Renault tank, with visible gold screws. World War I made the wristwatch popular, but World War II, during which watchmakers worked on fuses and aircraft instruments and other precision equipment helped create the technology to make the wristwatch nearly universal. The universalization of the wristwatch was an American development, the work of the American system of manufacture, the interchangeable parts system. The American watch making tradition was different from the European one, which was an extension of jewelry making. In America, watches came from clocks, and clocks came from guns. By the 1880Õs, thanks to interchangeable parts, the Waterbury Watch Company produced pocket watches that sold for a dollar. (Mark Twain ordered one.) Most American watches soon displayed Arabic numerals, and look as casual as the vulgate bible beside the Latinate of Roman faces. Before the twentieth century, however, wristwatches were most for women. The army pushed them as utilitarian devices for soldiers in World War I and many men still felt uncomfortable in them. Katherine Anne Porter's story Pale Horse, Pale Rider, records the reaction of one doughboy in training to his new wristwatch By 1927, aviation and the wristwatch were tied together in a new way: In 1927, when Lindbergh flew the Atlantic, Bulova produces the Lone Eagle watch. The first 5,000 sold out within three days. The watch had become collectible, a fashion and style product, no longer entirely sober. By 1930 Ingersoll offered the Mickey Mouse watch. Wrist watches were established as elements of personal style; Stephen Bayley describes Gianni AgnelliÕs habit of wearing his wrist watch outside his shirt; Jimmy Carter wore his, on the inside of his wrist, a habit picked up during his service on submarines where a sudden lurch could crack the crystal. The middle of the century neatly enough brought the first Timex, the Mercury, a wrist watch for the masses that came from the Waterbury Watch CompanyÕs successor. By replacing jewels with long lasting bearings Timex moved the high quality watch out of the realm of jewelry and into that of high grade industrial product. The result was far less expensive than Swiss watches, yet more durable and easier to produce. Soon Timex was the most popular watch brand in the country, known for the famous slogan: Timex - It Takes a Licking and Keeps on Ticking. By the early 50s, beginning with BulovaÕs Accutron, the watch spring was replaced first by a tuning fork, then a quartz crystal and finally a silicon chipÑa neat bridging of the gap between mechanics and electronics that had echoesacross society. Something of the fascination of the watch vanished along with the mechanism, notes David Landes in Revolution in Time, his history of the way the evolution of clocks and watches paced the industrial revolution. The wristwatch continued to reflect wider trends. The Seventies was the brief era when digital displays carried prestige. To some digital watches were added absurd calculators with buttons so small you had to use a pen tip to touch them. The active life gave rise to the "sports" watch, the waterproof watch, the impact proof watch. Wrist watches today are often still marketed as proven by divers or drivers, pilots and mountain climbers, cosmonauts or aquanauts. But the issue of digital versus analog faded, like that of roman versus arabic, subsumed in a new development that made the wrist watch a touchstone of changes in design as a whole. The arrival of Swatch not only saved the Swiss watch industry, on the ropes from Japanese competition, but set a model for design. F.A. HayekÕs introduction of the Swatch changed the paradigm: Swatch surrounds a basic mechanism, using only a few parts, with cases of varying shapes and styles. Once precious objects, wristwatches become almost disposable and collectible in a new way: for variety not rarity. By the end of the century the wrist watch showed how varied the whole world of design had become: despite all predictions, Rolex and Santos survived, but $3 Star Wars watches also flourished. The Swatch model applied to cell phones, beepers, even automobiles suggested a new model for designers: a world where internal mechanisms vary little and the outside shell becomes the key, garish or elegant, flip or fancy. And at centuryÕs end we prepared for video screens and GPS receivers to join time on our wrists. Books · Recent
Stories · Euroland · Webcams · Design |
