A Walk Through The History Of Watches

Watches are an ingenious invention made to keep track of time

. A watch is essentially a smaller version of a clock that can either be worn on the wrist or it can be attached to a chain and then carried around in the pocket as was usual in the beginning eras. The man who invented the first watch that could be put in the pocket was Peter Henlein in Germany in the year 1524. This was not the end but simply the beginning of an invention that would serve two purposes: a necessity to check the time and later as a fashion statement. There were massive developments that took place all through the 17th century. The biggest breakthrough or rather a very impressive milestone in the progress of the development of wristwatches came in 1970 with the invention of the first ever watch that was of a digital nature. This was a huge leap from the conventional timepieces that were essentially powered by spring.

Now where does the name watch come from? There are a lot of theories as to how the name was coined. One of the theory states that the name came from the old English word that described the man who used to serve as a night watchman and see to the shifts of the various night watchmen.

The watches first made an appearance with an analogue display and since then people have preferred timepieces with analogue display over those with digital display. A watch with an analogue display is the one that has a dial bordered with numbers and needles rotating on the dial. A digital watch just displays the time in numerical form. The analogue watches seem to be more pricy than the digital ones. The watch that will be available in the mid price range will most assuredly be powered electronically and have a quartz crystal that helps it keep time.

The expensive watches are primarily bought to present a bold fashion statement. They are bought for their good looks and their excellent craftsmanship. They are mostly powered by spring movements as they were designed initially. But it has been seen that the quartz crystal keeps time more accurately than the spring movements. With the advancements in the watch industry, if you choose to buy a watch you can buy the one that shows not just time, but the date, year, month and also keeps time for another location too. In the modern watch system, there are almost no moving parts as the time is shown and kept electronically.

Even with quartz watches, you can have a variety of watch systems. There are those quartz movements that are powered by batteries, some quartz movements need oscillators and then there are some that work in accordance with an integrated circuit. On the other hand, the electronic watches use battery to keep time which helped replace those watches that have to be constantly wound to help keep spring movements agile.

by: Alfred Svensen

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