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VIIIThe Wrist

ESEN
Index
ESEN
Index

Chapter VIII · Act II — Making Time

The Wrist

1900–1945

The watch leaves the pocket and becomes both instrument and statement of identity.

For centuries a man’s watch belonged in a pocket or a waistcoat; the wristlet was almost always a woman’s jewel. Within a few decades it climbs to every wrist: first out of need, in the air and in the trenches; then out of choice. By 1934 Switzerland exports almost twice as many wristwatches as pocket watches.

From pocket to wrist

Drag to turn it · arrow keys on a keyboard · double-click to face it

A schematic transformation: no case reproduces any particular model.

  1. 1Case
  2. 2Bow and pendant
  3. 3Lugs
  4. 4Strap

  1. A pocket watch: crown and bow at twelve, to hang it from a chain.

  2. In the First World War, reading the time without letting go of anything matters: the case grows lugs for a strap.

  3. The crown moves down to three, where the fingers reach it without taking the watch off.

  4. And the case leaves the circle: it is drawn for the wrist from the start, like the Santos of 1904 or the Tank.

A statement of identity

  1. The Santos

    The aviator Alberto Santos-Dumont complains to Louis Cartier that a pocket watch is impractical in flight. Cartier makes him a flat one with a square bezel, to read the time without letting go of the controls. It goes on sale in 1911.

  2. The Tank

    Louis Cartier designs it after the Renault tanks he sees on the Western Front. By the end of the war almost every soldier wears a wristwatch; in 1919 the first six Tanks are made.

  3. The self-winding wristwatch

    John Harwood develops a wristwatch that winds itself and is set by turning the bezel, without a crown. The Swiss patent follows in 1924, and it is shown at the Basel Fair in 1926.

  4. The Oyster

    A case sealed against water and dust. In October 1927 Mercedes Gleitze, who has just swum the English Channel, wears one tied round her neck on a second attempt. She does not finish, but the watch holds out.

  5. The Reverso

    Some polo players ask César de Trey for a watch that can take the knocks. René-Alfred Chauvot designs for LeCoultre a case that turns over to protect the dial and the glass.

  6. The Graves Supercomplication

    Ordered in 1925 and delivered to Henry Graves Jr.: a pocket watch with 24 complications, the most complicated in the world until 1989. In 2014 it sells at auction for 23.2 million Swiss francs.

The Line of Precision

The error a day of each chapter’s clocks, on a logarithmic scale. The line moves on with the story: each chapter draws its own stretch.

This chapter’s precision

Shortt-Synchronome clock1921
≈ 1 s a year
  1. c. 1390 BCE: Clepsydra, ≈ half an hour a day
  2. c. 1386: Foliot tower clock, ≈ 15 min a day
  3. 1656: Huygens’s pendulum, ≈ 15 s a day
  4. c. 1715: Graham’s regulator, a few seconds a week
  5. 1761: Harrison’s H4, 5 s in 81 days
  6. 1889: Riefler regulator, ≈ 0.01 s a day
  7. 1921: Shortt-Synchronome clock, ≈ 1 s a year

This chapter’s sources