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The Earliest Wristwatches

Although many firms claim to have invented the wristwatch, there must be a serious question as to whether such a simple development really required to actually be "invented" as such - surely it is obvious?

In their monumental "Technique and History of the Swiss Watch" (ISBN 0 600 03633 2, and weighing in at nearly 2.5kg, truly monumental!) the authors, Eugène Jaquet and Alfred Chapuis, relate the following story on the origin of the wristwatch: "Much has been written about this subject, and we ourselves have heard the following story from an old engraver: A good woman, seated on a bench in a public park, was suckling her child. In order to observe the time, she had attached her watch around her arm. A passer-by was struck by this naive ingenuity. On his return home, he soldered two lugs on to a lady's watch, and added a strap." Are Jaquet and Chapuis really, seriously, expecting us to believe that the combined brains of the watch industry, which had produced such complications as the chronograph, minute repeater, perpetual calendar, and the tourbillon, were unable to come up with the idea of soldering two bits of wire on to a watch case so that a strap could be attached? I don't think so! I don't know why Jaquet and Chapuis included this ridiculous story in their otherwise valuable work, because the real story of the evolution of the wristwatch is much more interesting than this.

The very first wristwatches we know about were small watches on bracelets (bracelet-watches or montres-bracelets) intended for ladies. An account book of Jaquet-Droz and Leschot of Geneva mentions, in 1790, "a watch to be fixed to a bracelet,". When Eugène de Beauharnais married Princess Auguste-Amélie of Leuchtenbergin 1809, the Empress josephine presented her daughter-in-law with two bracelets, one containing a watch, the other a calendar. These were made in 1806 by the Parisian jeweller Nitot. In 1810 the French watch maker Bréguet was comissioned by the Queen of Naples to make a wristwatch, which was completed in 1812. Patek Phillipe made the key-winding lady's bracelet watch shown on the left in 1868 for the Countess Koscowicz of Hungary. By the end of the nineteenth century, many if not most watch makers were producing bracelet watches, often with elaborate enamelling and jewelling of saphires, rubies, or diamonds.

But these earliest wrist watches were not serious watches; they were worn by ladies as novelties, or elaborate jewellery. Wrist watches were regarded as too small to be properly engineered in order to keep time accurately; and too prone to damage by shock, or contamination with dust and moisture due to their exposed location; and, perhaps most damningly as far as men were concerned, effeminate, because wrist watches were worn by ladies. A gentleman who wanted to keep track of time wore a pocket watch, usually tucked into a waistcoat pocket on the end of a long "Albert," a chain with a bar to fasten it to a button hole.

The true story of the wrist watch, or at least of the man's wrist watch, is of how it overcame these technical and social barriers to become an essential part of every mans wardrobe - just as the finest and most complicated wrist watches are still today, despite the fact that, with every gadget from phones to computers having a clock built in, they are no longer needed to tell the time!

Military Pressures

Things began to change in the nineteenth century when watches began to be used to co-ordinate battlefield operations. Pocket watches were awkward to use in combat situations; under a great-coat, on horseback, or under fire, and so military men began fitting pocket watches into cups on specially made leather straps, or asking manufacturers to fit them with chains or straps, so that they could be worn on the wrist. In fact, whilst technological advances are often credited with the British victory in the Anglo-Boer War (South Africa 1899-1902), including smokeless gunpowder, the magazine-fed rifle, and even the automatic or machine gun, it can be argued that it was a not-so-lethal device that did more to turn the tide in Britains favor: the wristwatch. While the British troops were better trained and equipped than the Boers, they were slightly outnumbered, and at a disadvantage while attacking the Boer's heavily entrenched positions. British officers achieved success by using precision timing to coordinate simultaneous troop movements, and synchronize flanking attacks against the Boer's formations. Strapping a watch to ones wrist so that it could regularly be checked quickly and easily, rather than having to fumble about with a pocket watch, was essential under fast moving battlefield conditions.

As pictured right, an advertisement for a military pocket watch, "The Companys Service Watch," appeared in the 1901 Goldsmiths Company Watch and Clock Catalog. It was described as "The most reliable timekeeper in the World for Gentlemen going on Active Service or for rough wear." The "UNSOLICITED TESTIMONIAL" dated June 7th 1900 quoted in the advert stated "I wore it continually in South Africa on my wrist for 3½ months. It kept most excellent time, and never failed me. Faithfully yours, Capt. North Staffs. Regt." This pocket watch would have been mounted in a cup on a leather wrist strap like the one illustrated below, and the writer was obviously on active service during the height of the Anglo-Boer war referred to above. I am currently looking in to getting this strap reproduced, so if you would be interested in one, please get in touch. These watches are cased in "Borgel Patent" style cases, where the movement, dial and bezel are fixed to an externally threaded holder, and the whole assembly then screws into the threaded case from the front. This was an early attempt at making the case less permeable to water and dust.

Interestingly, the same 1910 Goldsmiths catalogue contains two pages of advertisements for ladies' watches mounted on either rigid or flexible bracelets, and 12 pages of adverts for men's pocket watches, but no adverts at all for men's wristwatches. Men's pocket watches by this date had reached a high degree of sophistication. The cheapest and simplest watch advertised is a silver keyless watch with a jewelled lever movement, compensation balance, enamel dial and crystal glass at £2:10. The most expensive is a Gentlemen's gold, London made, keyless repeater, with chronograph registering minutes, seconds, and fifths of seconds, and a perpetual calendar showing day, date, month and moon phase, with fully jewelled movement, BréguetSay: "Bre-gay". An overcoil hairsping where the last coil is raised above and parallel to the others with a smaller radius. Invented by Abraham-Louis Bréguet in 1795, the overcoil form allows the hairspring to expand and contract concentrically, which improves timekeeping and is still in use today. hairspring, compensation balance, adjusted for all temperatures and positions, guaranteed to keep most accurate time, for £200. No wristwatch at the time could hope to compete with such a display of horological excellence! (and not many have since, come to that!)

Who Made My Watch?

The Goldsmiths Company catalogue notes either that "These watches are made abroad specially to the order of the Goldsmiths and Silversmiths Company, Ltd., who examine them in London and guarantee them." or that "Some of the intricate parts of these watches are made abroad" without even mentioning where (although this was presumably Switzerland) let alone a makers name. If you have a trench watch from the first quater of the twentieth century, you might never find out who made it - branding like we are used to today just didn't exist at the time. Apart from a few companies who made everything in house, Swiss watches at the time were usually made in pieces by small workshops that specialised in one part of the movement - one made the plates, another the gears, another the balance etc., and then these pieces were assembled by a firm who put the finished movement into a case made by a specialist case manufacturer. The name of any of these individual houses would have meant nothing to the man in the street before the modern era of mass advertising. The only branding as such was that usually the jeweller who retailed the watch, and who would be a known and trusted name in his city or town, had his name printed on the dial in the big white space between the central hand boss and the "12" - but because this was done in indian ink or similar onto the enamel dial after it had been fired, this was not very permanent and has usually worn off. It was not until 1921 that Wilsdorf and Davis started putting "Rolex" on a small proportion of their watch dials and taking out adverts to promote their "brand", and not until several years later that all Rolex watches were so marked.

Sometimes the maker can be interpreted from marks stamped on to the movement, for instance if you ever see "13.34" stamped almost under the balance wheel, you know you have a Longines movement in your hands even without any other marks. Sometimes a makers mark is revealed when the dial plate is removed. If you have the watch overhauled, make sure the watchmaker looks out for this and any other tell-tale signs, and if possible get him to photograph the movement from the under-dial side. One very experienced watchmaker spotted that one of my watches was an Omega, even though it wasn't marked in any way, he just recognised the movement after servicing many over the years.

Girard-Perregaux

In 1879 the German Emperor Wilhelm I visited the Berlin Trade Fair and saw some experimental wrist watches made by Girard-Perregaux of La Chaux de Fonds in Switzerland. He gave an order for 1,000 of these for the German Imperial Navy, and as many as 2,000 such wristwatches were delivered in 1880, so Girard-Perregaux can fairly claim to be the first manufacturers of wristwatches in significant volume. Not much is known about these wristwatches because the archives of Girard-Perregaux were partially lost some years later, and it is thought that all the watches are lost too. It is believed that they were 10 or 12 lignes,A ligne, or line, is 1/12 of an old French inch, which itself is 1.0657 of an English inch. So a ligne is 2.256mm. with a small seconds hand, in gold cases to resist the corrosive effects of salt water, on chain wrist bands, and with a grid-like metal cover over the dial. To the left is a picture kindly provided to me by Girard-Perregaux of a watch thought to be similar to the German Navy Watch. It shows a gold watch with fixed wire lugs holding it to a leather strap. To protect the crystal there is a metal grill attached to the case with a hinge at 12 O'Clock, and a push release at 6 O'Clock to open the grill and look at the dial.

Omega

Another maker of very early wristwatches was the manufacturer founded as an assembly workshop in La Chaux-de-Fonds in 1848 by the 23 year old Louis Brandt. As early as 1892, in partnership with Audemars Piguet, this firm produced the worlds first minute repeater wristwatch, ringing the hours, quarter-hours and minutes on command.

In 1894 a completely new 19 ligneA ligne, or line, is 1/12 of an old French inch, which itself is 1.0657 of an English inch. So a ligne is 2.256mm. pocket watch movement was introduced which proved extremely successful. Its salient points were the simplicity of its construction, and the interchangability of its parts which were made by ground breaking new automated production processes. The company's banker, Henri Rieckel, suggested the name "Omega" for the new watch. The new calibre made Omega the principal watchmaker in Switzerland, both technically and numerically. The overwhelming success of watches bearing the Omega name led to it being adopted as the sole name used for watches by the company from 1903. Omega began producing wrist watches in 1900, and men's wrist watches from 1902

The picture to the left shows an Omega ladies' wristwatch manufactured in 1900 with a LépineInvented in 1760 by the French watchmaker Jean-Antoine Lépine (1720-1814) this is a movement or calibre with the upper plate and pillars replaced by bridges to hold the wheels, which makes the movement easier to service, and with the balance placed to one side instead of on top of the movement, which makes the movement thinner. This should not be confused with the Lépine style, which refers to watches having the pinion of the second hand in line with the projected axis of the winding stem  movement in a double hinged silver case, with white enamel dial, railway minute track, skeleton Arabic hour numerals and blued steel pear-shaped hands. This was the first mass-produced wristwatch manufactured by Omega, and also one of the first industrially made wristwatches in the world. Omega started making men's wristwatches in 1902 and Britain's Royal Flying Corps chose Omega wristwatches in 1917 as for its combat units, as did the American army in 1918.

IWC - International Watch Company

The International Watch Company, or IWC, was set up in Schaffhausen in the German-speaking region of Eastern Switzerland, in 1868 by the American engineer and watchmaker Florentine Ariosto Jones. Jones imported machine tools from USA, or had them made in-house, and brought together Swiss craftsmanship with the standardised precision of machine tools to increase the precision of the movements, and interchangeability of parts, which simplified assembly and repair work. At the end of the nineteenth century, IWC began producing men's wrist watches. These were fitted with movements that had previously been used for ladies' pocket watches, because the movement diameter of 12.5 ligneA ligne, or line, is 1/12 of an old French inch, which itself is 1.0657 of an English inch. So a ligne is 2.256mm. (28.2 mm) was the right size for a man's wrist watch. One of these wrist watches in a 14 carat red gold case with hinged lugs, pin set hands, enamel dial with Roman numerals, an IWC movement calibre 64-12.5 with 15 jewels, three screwed chatonsJewel bearings are normally set into the main plate and bridges of a watch. A chaton is separate setting or holder for jewel bearing, enabling it to be easily replaced in the future. bi-metallic balance wheel, and BréguetSay: "Bre-gay". An overcoil hairsping where the last coil is raised above and parallel to the others with a smaller radius. Invented by Abraham-Louis Bréguet in 1795, the overcoil form allows the hairspring to expand and contract concentrically, which improves timekeeping and is still in use today. hairspring, was sold on 30 December 1899 to Scholokoff in St. Petersburg.

Cartier

In 1904 Louis Cartier made a wristwatch for the aviation pioneer Alberto Santos-Dumont. Santos-Dumont had won the Deutsch prize for flying his airship from the Park Saint Cloud to the Eiffel Tower and back in under 30 minutes. He celebrated his success at Maxim's, where he complained to Cartier about the difficulty of checking his pocket watch while flying. Cartier went to work and produced a watch to be worn on the wrist with a leather strap and a small buckle. Santos-Dumont never again took off without this wristwatch, and Cartier started selling Santos-Dumont wrist watches to the public in 1911, and is still selling them today, which is some achievement.

Longines

Longines' watch making origins date to 1832 in Saint-Imier, Switzerland. In 1867 a new watch factory was built at a location called "Les Longines" and the Longines Watches brand was born. In 1905 Longines started making ladies wrist watches, and in 1910 introduced a man's wristwatch.

Gruen

Gruen made both men's and women's wristwatches starting in 1908, but these proved popular only with women. Like the others mentioned here, Gruen was one of the few companies to take wristwatches seriously this early, seeing their potential in spite of disappointing early sales to men. Gruen made both wrist and pocket watches for the military during World War One. Most had silver cases, which would tarnish but would not corrode under the conditions in the trenches, and to meet U.S. military regulations, luminous dial markings and hands. By 1918 Gruen were making a "Moisture Proof Military Wrist Watch". The watch was hinged inside an outer case with a screw-on bezel and crystal. The watch is completely sealed inside the outer case, so the bezel must be unscrewed to get access to the watch to wind and set it. This is eactly the same design as the "Hermetic" case supplied to Rolex and others by Francis Baumgartner, although in their 1918 book, "A Worthy Company of Watchmakers" it is claimed as a Gruen patent design.

Movado

Movado, meaning "always in motion" in the international language of Esperanto, was founded in 1881 by 19-year old entrepreneur Achille Ditesheim in the village of La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland. In 1912 Movado created the Polyplan, its revolutionary, patented movement constructed on three planes to fit a case curved to follow the wrist, and the "WW1 Soldier's Watch with its elegant, protective grill". I have enclosed this remark in quotes because (1) I have never seen a picture of the watch so I don't know whether the protective grill was truly elegant, and (2) I don't know how Movado knew in 1912 that the first World War would break out in two years time, and that soldiers would require wrist watches. If anyone can enlighten me on either of these two points, I would be most grateful.

Gallet et Cie

Gallet are one of the oldest watchmakers in the business, tracing their history back to one Humbertus Gallet, who in 1466 moved from Bourg-en-Bresse in France to Geneva, and was a builder of tower clocks. His family were joined some 220 years later by other members of the Gallet family who were recorded as goldsmiths and watchmakers.

In 1912 Gallet made the first wristwatch to include a centre second hand, that is one originating from the centre of the dial along with the hour and minute hands. Previously wristwatches either lacked a second hand or had a small subsidiary seconds dial which was difficult to read accurately. A centre second hand is useful for timing tasks such measuring the human heart rate. Gallet's "sweep second" watches were issued to nurses and military medical personnel during World War 1.

In 1914 Gallet made the first chronograph wristwatch, which they say was made to the order of the British military, but I have not been able to substantiate this claim. This watch was a reduced size version of a traditional pocket chronograph, for which Gallet were well known, and still featured the three piece case, porcelain enamel dial, and centre button (pusher) crown of its larger predecessor.

The Move To Public Acceptance And Fashionability

So we can see that a number of companies were producing both men's and ladies' wrist watches in the first decade of the twentieth century. However, the vast majority of the wrist watches that were actually sold, as opposed to just being available in the manufacturer's catalogue, were ladies' wrist watches. The idea of wearing a watch on the wrist was gradually gaining public acceptance, but there was still the general view that a watch worn on the wrist, being necessarily smaller than a pocket watch, and subject to being more generally knocked about, dust, water from hand washing etc. would never be able to keep good time, and it was still perceived by some as unmanly. Two things now conspired to bring about a more rapid change in the fortunes of the wristwatch: the commitment of one Hans Wilsdorf; and the occurrence of the first World War.

Hans Wilsdorf

Hans Wilsdorf, with financial help from his brother-in-law Alfred Davis, founded the watch importing and distribution firm of Wilsdorf & Davis in London in 1905. Wilsdorf was convinced that the wristwatch was the way of the future, and soon contracted the firm of Hermann Aegler to manufacture wristwatchs for him. Wilsdorf was a perfectionist, and never ceased pressing Aegler to improve the timekeeping of the watches they made for him, which he now insisted be branded "Rolex" - a name he had invented. In 1910 Aegler submitted a Rolex wrist watch to the Bienne testing station. It received a First Class certificate and thus became the first wristwatch to be officially certified as a chronometer in Switzerland. On July 15th 1914, a Rolex wristwatch received a Class A precision certificate from the Kew Observatory in Greenwich, which had previously only been achieved by marine chronometers. Wilsdorf remarked that this was a "red letter day" in the development of his firm, which he would never forget. The ability of a wristwatch to maintain accurate time keeping could no longer be be held in any doubt. You can read more about Hans Wilsdorf and the Rolex story on my Rolex page

World War One - WW1

Now that the wristwatch had been developed to be an accurate time keeper, it was only social acceptability that held it back. The first World War (World War One, 1914 - 1918) first required and ultimately legitimised the wristwatch. The standard timepieces issued to officers were still pocket watches, but these were impractical to use in the cramped conditions of the trenches, and in the open cockpits of early aircraft, and many officers soon purchased their own wristwatches, hence these watches are often referred to as "officers" or "trench" watches. The fact that they were purchased by individuals rather than being issued by the military authorities accounts for the enormous variety of WW1 era wrist watches, which makes them so interesting to collectors. So far as I have been able to establish, wrist watches were not officially issued to British military personnel until 1917 - the picture to the left is of one such watch, with the "pheon" or broad arrow which denotes it as War Department property. American forces seem to have been issued with wrist watches as soon as they entered the war in 1917. I have also come across a suggestion that Ingersoll "Radiolite" wrist watches were issued to British tank crews at the battle of the Somme in September 1916, but so far as I have been able to ascertain, the Ingersoll watches issued to these tank crews were pocket watches. If you can add anything to this, please get in touch.

As the war progressed and the techniques of warefare developed, the role of the wrist watch changed from being a convenience, to a life or death requirement when the "creeping" or "walking" barrage was introduced to protect advancing troops. A creeping barrage involved artillery fire moving forward in stages, so that the shells were falling just ahead of the advancing infantry. First used at the Battle of the Somme in 1916, it was soon appreciated how important it was for the attacking troops to follow the barrage closely, "leaning on the barrage", not allowing time for the defenders to emerge from their dug out shelters. This strategy required precise timing by both the heavy artillery and the infantry. Failure to achieve this would result in the artillery killing their own soldiers, and there was no opportunity to stop during the advance to fish out a pocket watch. The creeping barrage was used to great effect in the Canadian success at Vimy Ridge in April 1917.

Shrapnel Guards

To protect the delicate glass crystal of the wristwatch, many manufacturers offered shrapnel guards made of pierced metal. These slipped onto the wrist strap, and the piercing allowed the wearer to read the time through the holes.

Public Acceptance

As the war progressed, the public became used to seeing battle hardened military veterans returning from active service still wearing their wristwatches. This soon changed the public perception that wearing a wristwatch was not manly, and sales of wrist watches to the man-in-the-street started to take off. By 1930 sales of wristwatches had overtaken those of pocket watches. In 1937, at the Paris International Exhibition, one commentator wrote "Who would have thought only a few years ago, that the wristwatch would one day be presented in so many forms, and in such variety?"

Anatomy of a Trench Watch

The easiest way for a manufacturer to satisfy the demand for wristwatches was to add small loops of wire, called lugs, to an existing design of pocket watch. Pocket watches called "Hunters," because they had a hinged metal cover to protect the crystal during rough wear, already had the dial arranged with the winding stem at 3 O'Clock and the seconds dial at 6 O'Clock, so it was a simple matter to convert such movements to wristwatches by putting them into a plain case with simple loops of wire, called fixed wire lugs, to take a leather wrist strap.

Pictured left is one such watch by the Swiss company Gallet et Cie., who made watches with the brand name Electa. This watch exhibits many of the typical features of a trench watch: in addition to the fixed wire lugs, which in this case take a 12mm strap, the dial has " railway" style outline numerals, intended to take luminous paint which has long since worn away or been removed; the hands are "cathedral" style, like a leaded stained glass window, alternatively referred to as "poire - squelette" (pronounce " skelette"); there is a subsidiary second hand at 6 o'clock; and finally the large onion winding crown is very typical. These are often worn down so that the fine ribbing or fluting, which is so well preserved on this one, has disappeared.

The watch is in a silver case of the "Borgel Patent" design, hallmarked with the London import mark, and the date mark for 1915. The Borgel case was an early attempt to make wrist watches resistant to dust and moisture, and it is a one piece case, where the movement and bezel are mounted on a threaded ring which screws into the case from the front. The winding stem is fitted with a spring which allows it to be withdrawn by pulling out the crown so that the movement can be screwed in, and the method of setting the hands is unusual. Normally the crown winds the spring as usual, but when the pin or nail just below the crown is pressed in, the crown then moves the hands. You can see another example of a Borgel cased watch in the Goldsmiths Company advert above, which shows the movement of the central watch in its screwed carrier ring and the case clearly. The two watches below that one also show the pin-set detail to the right of the stem.

The case of my watch is signed with an FB cartouche like the one shown to the right. Because I knew that François Borgel had died in 1912, I initially understood that this was the mark of Francis Baumgartner of Geneva, apparently a well known case maker for Patek Phillipe and other high quality watches of the era who is said to have gone on to develop Borgel's design, and eventually contribute to the development of the Rolex Oyster. But this seems to have been an error, and I now know that this cartouche does in fact belong to François Borgel having been registered by him as his "marque de fabrique", or makers mark, in March 1887, and that manufacture of Borgel cases continued after the death of M. Borgel, initially under the direction of his daughter Louisa and later by Taubert & Fils. I am still researching this topic and intend to devote a page to it at a later date, but at the moment I have come across NO evidence for the existence of Francis Baumgartner or his involvement in pioneering case design.

The thing which intrigued me most about M. Borgel's marque is the key emblem. It is a door key, not a watch key and it appears that this is something to do with the city of Geneva where he worked. The case is also marked "A·G·R", which refers to "Atelier Gallet Racine". Racine, a cousin of the Gallets, handled most of Gallet's distribution during the 20th century.

If you have any questions, suggestions, or comments, then please drop me a line at You don't need to copy the email address, just click on it. I look forward to hearing from you!

Regards - David