The First World War

Wikipedia’s history of the wristwatch says wristlets were made mostly for women for about their first hundred years, and NPR, drawing on the Smithsonian, says men rarely wore them before the war.^1, 2

The idea was not new to soldiers. Worn & Wound describes men in the Boer War of 1899 to 1902 strapping small pocket watches to the wrist, and Wikipedia records a “Watch Wristlet” patented by the London firm Garstin in 1893.^1, 8

Some makers were already betting on the wrist. Wikipedia says Kew Observatory gave a Rolex wristwatch a class A certificate on 14 July 1914 and that Hans Wilsdorf predicted that year that wristwatches would largely replace pocket watches.⁹

Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia on 28 July 1914; Britain and Germany were at war from 4 August. The fighting ended with the Armistice of 11 November 1918.^10, 11

A pocket watch was hard to reach in a trench. NPR quotes Doran Cart of the National WWI Museum on belts, whistles and gas masks leaving no room, and Wikipedia says pocket watches were impractical in combat.^2, 3

Most early trench watches were converted pocket watches with lugs soldered on for a strap. A Science Museum Group object shows one: an Ingersoll “Sterling” in a silver case hallmarked 1915, with lugs added at 12 and 6.^3, 12

Timing became part of the attack. The Smithsonian curator Carlene Stephens has said that artillery cover for an advance was an elaborately timed, choreographed movement and that pilots used the watch to judge their fuel; the Western Front Association notes that the army’s clocks were put forward an hour shortly before the Somme, which began at 7.30 a.m. on 1 July 1916.^2, 6

Officers bought their own. In the Commons on 30 September 1915 Sir Alfred Mond called watches necessities for officers at the front; Capt. B. C. Lake’s handbook of 1916 lists a luminous wristwatch with unbreakable glass; and from 1917, Worn & Wound says, the British Army issued a limited number of luminous wristwatches, mainly to signallers and engineers.^3, 5, 8

The factories went to war as well. The Historical Dictionary of Switzerland notes that the war was very profitable to the Swiss watch industry, which made aircraft counters and shell timers and, being mechanised, munitions from 1914; Waltham, by Wikipedia’s account, made time fuses and speedometers.^4, 13

Luminous dials spread. Wikipedia dates the Radium Luminous Material Corporation to 1914 and Ingersoll’s Radiolite watches to 1916; the company’s plant at Orange, New Jersey, opened in 1917, when newspapers advertised luminous watches as gifts for men at the front.^{14, 15, 16}

Britain taxed imported watches. From 29 September 1915 clocks, watches and their parts paid a customs duty of 33⅓ per cent of value, to cut imports in wartime; Mond told the Commons the trade came mostly from Switzerland and the flat rate was practically prohibitive on better watches. The duty belongs to the story of British watchmaking.⁵

Wikipedia ties that duty to Rolex moving its international headquarters from London to Bienne in 1915, and dates the move to Geneva to 1919, after the war.⁹

Public time changed by law. By the Western Front Association’s account, Germany and Austria-Hungary put their clocks forward on 30 April 1916 to save coal, Britain followed on 21 May, and the British armies in France took French time on 14 June.⁶

Not every army changed. Worn & Wound says the wristwatch did not catch on in German military circles during the war as it did in the British and American forces.¹⁷

The wristwatch overtook the pocket watch within fifteen years. Wikipedia gives Swiss exports of the two as level by 1930 and wristwatches nearly double by 1934; the National WWII Museum says wristwatches outsold pocket watches by the end of the 1920s.^1, 18

How far the war caused that is a matter of interpretation, not of sales records of the time. Wikipedia gives a Horological Journal of 1917 as saying the wristlet was little used by men before the war; the wristwatch itself was older, as told in From the pocket to the wrist.^1, 2

The radium had a cost. Dial painters at Orange were taught to point their brushes with their lips; by 1924 about fifty former workers were ill and about a dozen dead, and five who sued settled in June 1928.^15, 16

The next war wrote the soldier’s watch into specifications: the British W.W.W., the American A-11 and the German observation watch, told under the Second World War.^{17, 18, 19}