1500–1600 Clock-watches

The first timepieces to be worn, made in the 16th century in the German cities of Nuremberg and Augsburg, were transitional in size between clocks and watches. These 'clock-watches' were fastened to clothing or worn on a chain around the neck. They were heavy drum shaped cylindrical brass boxes several inches in diameter, engraved and ornamented. They had only an hour hand. The face was not covered with glass, but usually had a hinged brass cover, often decoratively pierced with grillwork so the time could be read without opening. The movement was made of iron or steel and held together with tapered pins and wedges, until screws began to be used after 1550. Many of the movements included striking or alarm mechanisms. They usually had to be wound twice a day. The shape later evolved into a rounded form; these were later called Nuremberg eggs. Still later in the century there was a trend for unusually shaped watches, and clock-watches shaped like books, animals, fruit, stars, flowers, insects, crosses, and even skulls (Death's head watches) were made.

The reason for wearing these early clock-watches was not to tell the time. The accuracy of their verge and foliot movements was so poor, with errors of perhaps several hours per day, that they were practically useless. They were made as jewelry and novelties for the nobility, valued for their fine ornamentation, unusual shape, or intriguing mechanism, and accurate timekeeping was of very minor importance.

Potable Drum Watch - Christoph Schissler

Type of Watch

The original chronographs that Rieussec invented were called tape chronographs. They consisted of a tape that was constantly being dragged along at a controlled speed. When activated, a pen would be pushed onto the tape and begin recording until deactivated.

The two main types of modern day chronographs are the automatic chronograph and the digital chronograph. The difference between the two is that the automatic chronograph depends solely on kinetic energy as its power source, while the digital chronograph is much like the common stopwatch and uses a battery to gain power. Other, more specific, types of chronographs include calendar chronographs, split second chronographs, tachometer chronographs, telemeter chronographs, tide chronographs, and asthometer chronographs. Each of these chronographs has an added feature that sets them apart from the regular automatic or digital chronograph.

Citizen Atessa Eco-Drive (Have both digital and analog)

Example Of Watch
Swatch

"Swatch" began development in the early 1980s, under the leadership of the then ETA SA's CEO, Ernst Thomke with a small team of enthusiastic watch engineers led by Elmar Mock and Jacques Müller, The engineers of Swatch designed the case back of the watch as a movement main plate (platine). This concept led to the thinnest watch in the world—the Delirium, which debuted in 1979.

Conceived at the beginning as a standard timekeeper in plastic, Franz Sprecher, a marketing consultant hired by Thomke to give the project an outsider's consideration, soon led the project into what it has become: a trendy line of watches with a full brand identity and marketing concept—instead of developing just another watch collection, which could have soon been matched by the competition.

Swatch was originally intended to re-capture entry level market share lost by Swiss manufacturers during the aggressive growth of Japanese companies such as Seiko and Citizen in the 1960s and 1970s and to re-popularize analog watches at a time when digital watches had achieved wide popularity. The launch of the Swatch brand in 1983 was marked by bold new styling, design and marketing.

Lebanese entrepreneur, Nicolas G. Hayek, who, with a group of Swiss investors, took over a majority shareholding of Swatch during 1985 in the then, between ASUAG and SSIH, newly consolidated group under the name Societe Suisse de Microelectronique et d'Horlogerie, or SMH, became Chairman of the Board of Directors and CEO in 1986 (who later significantly changed its name to Swatch Group), further masterminded its development to reach its now major worldwide Swiss watch brand status within the lower end of watch prices.

This combination of marketing and manufacturing expertise restored Switzerland as a major player in the world wristwatch market. Synthetic materials were used for the watchcases as well as a new ultra-sonic welding process and the assembly technology. The number of components was reduced from 91 or more to 51, with no loss of accuracy. The Swatch watch was also known as the savior, to many of the swatch-watch style fans.

The name "Swatch" is a contraction of "Second Watch" - coined by Nichole Lopez because the new watch was introduced with a new concept of watches as casual, fun, and relatively disposable accessories.

Swatch Flik Flak Fifa - Design for World Cup Edition in Spain

Swatch Irony ( Charcoal Suit )

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Fucntion of Watch

A watch is a timepiece, typically worn either on the wrist or attached on a chain and carried in a pocket. Wristwatches are the most common type of watch used today. Watches evolved in the 17th century from spring powered clocks, which appeared in the 15th century. The first watches were strictly mechanical. As technology progressed, the mechanisms used to measure time have, in some cases, been replaced by use of quartz vibrations or electronic pulses. The first digital electronic watch was developed in 1970.

Before wristwatches became popular in the 1920s, most watches were pocket watches, which often had covers and were carried in a pocket and attached to a watch chain or watch fob. In the early 1900s, the wristwatch, originally called a Wristlet, was reserved for women and considered more of a passing fad than a serious timepiece. Men, who carried pocket watches, were quoted as saying they would "sooner wear a skirt as wear a wristwatch". This changed in World War I, when soldiers on the battlefield found pocket watches to be impractical and attached their watches to their wrist by a cupped leather strap. It is also believed that Girard-Perregaux equipped the German Imperial Navy with wristwatches in a similar fashion as early as the 1880s, to be used while synchronizing naval attacks and firing artillery.

Most inexpensive and medium-priced watches used mainly for timekeeping are electronic watches with quartz movements. Expensive collectible watches, valued more for their workmanship and aesthetic appeal than for simple timekeeping, often have purely mechanical movements and are powered by springs, even though mechanical movements are less accurate than more affordable quartz movements. In addition to the time, modern watches often display the day, date, month and year, and electronic watches may have many other functions. Watches that provide additional time-related features such as timers, chronographs and alarm functions are not uncommon. Some modern designs even go as far as using GPS technology or heart-rate monitoring capabilities.

Uses of Watch

Mechanical Movement in Watch.

Compared to electronic movements, mechanical watches are less accurate, often with errors of seconds per day, and they are sensitive to position, temperature and magnetism. They are also costly to produce, require regular maintenance and adjustment, and are more prone to failure. Nevertheless, the craftsmanship of mechanical watches still attracts interest from part of the watch-buying public. Skeleton watches are designed to leave the mechanism visible for aesthetic purposes.

Mechanical movements use an escapement mechanism to control and limit the unwinding and winding parts of a spring, converting what would otherwise be a simple unwinding into a controlled and periodic energy release. Mechanical movements also use a balance wheel together with thebalance spring (also known as a hairspring) to control motion of the gear system of the watch in a manner analogous to the pendulum of a pendulum clock. The tourbillon, an optional part for mechanical movements, is a rotating frame for the escapement, which is used to cancel out or reduce the effects of gravitational bias to the timekeeping. Due to the complexity of designing a tourbillon, they are very expensive, and only found in "prestige" watches.

The pin-lever escapement (called the Roskopf movement after its inventor, Georges Frederic Roskopf), which is a cheaper version of the fully levered movement, was manufactured in huge quantities by many Swiss manufacturers as well as Timex, until it was replaced by quartz movements.

Tuning-fork watches use a type of electromechanical movement. Introduced by Bulova in 1960, they use a tuning fork with a precise frequency (most often 360 hertz) to drive a mechanical watch. The task of converting electronically pulsed fork vibration into rotary movement is done via two tiny jeweled fingers, called pawls. Tuning-fork watches were rendered obsolete when electronic quartz watches were developed. Quartz watches were cheaper to produce and even more accurate.

Traditional mechanical watch movements use a spiral spring called a mainspring as a power source. In manual watches the spring must be rewound periodically by the user by turning the watch crown. Antique pocketwatches were wound by inserting a separate key into a hole in the back of the watch and turning it. Most modern watches are designed to run 40 hours on a winding and thus must be wound daily, but some run for several days and a few have 192-hour mainsprings and are wound weekly.

A Rusian mechanical watch movement.

Different kinds of movements move the hands differently as shown in this 2 second exposure. The left watch has a 24-hour analog dial with a mechanical 1/6 s movement, the right one has a more common 12-hour dial and a "1 s" quartz movement.