From the pocket to the wrist

For most of the nineteenth century a watch worn on the wrist was a piece of women's jewellery; Wikipedia says early 'wristlets' were made almost entirely for women for about a hundred years, while men kept to the pocket watch into the early twentieth century.^1, 2, 25

Breguet's archives record that Caroline Murat, Queen of Naples, ordered 'a repeater watch for bracelet' on 8 June 1810 for 5,000 francs; watch no. 2639, a thin oval repeater on a wristlet of hair and gold thread, was sold to her on 5 December 1811. Breguet calls it the first wristwatch ever known; it was last seen at Breguet for repair in 1855, and no collection lists it today.^{1, 26, 27}

Patek Philippe dates 'the first Swiss wristwatch' to 1868, made for Countess Koscowicz of Hungary; the date comes from the company's own timeline, and Wikipedia repeats it.^1, 28

'First' depends on definitions. Wikipedia mentions an 'armed watch' given to Elizabeth I in 1571 and calls a bracelet watch of 1806 for Joséphine de Beauharnais the oldest surviving; Breguet claims 1810 and Patek Philippe 1868 for Switzerland; Cartier calls its Santos of 1904 one of the first. None of these was the start of a continuous product line for men.^{1, 26, 28, 29}

Wristwatches stayed a fashion item for women well into the 1920s. A Gazette du Bon Ton plate of 1922 shows 'bracelets et bracelets-montres' side by side, all to be made in gold, and Donzé describes the ladies' watch as a market the industry created, 'displayed on the wrist' as an accessory.^3, 30

Men resisted. A 1919 book written for Ingersoll says the wrist-watch 'had been often ridiculed as effeminate'; the Smithsonian curator Carlene Stephens told CBC that before the war wrist-worn watches 'were seen as effeminate', and CBC quotes a 1916 New York Times article calling them a 'silly-ass fad'.^{2, 25, 31}

Even its defenders admitted the paradox: the same 1919 book notes that the wrist-watch had first been adopted 'as an obvious convenience in the Army and on the hunting-field', two of the most masculine settings it could imagine.²

Sport found uses for it early. In 1893 Henry Wood & Co. of London advertised a 'Cyclist Watch Wristlet' with a nickel watch for 17s 6d; the advertisement calls it 'the only way to carry a watch on a Cycle without injuring it'.³²

Many early men's 'wristlets' were simply leather cups that held a small pocket watch. A registered design of 2 September 1893 granted to Arthur Garstin shows such a strap, with a compass; Wikipedia describes the Garstin design as a patented 'Watch Wristlet'.^1, 33

Purpose-built wrist cases followed: Wikipedia says the Swiss firm Dimier Frères & Cie patented the now standard wire lugs in 1903, and the Swiss dictionary credits Eterna of Grenchen with the first alarm wristwatch, in 1914.^1, 34

The First World War is usually credited with the change; Wikipedia says it 'dramatically shifted public perceptions' of the man's wristwatch, and the National WWII Museum calls the wristwatch 'a product of World War I'. These are later judgements, not sales records of the time.^1, 2, 5

Period voices saw it the same way. The Horological Journal wrote in 1917 that the wristlet watch was 'little used by the sterner sex before the war' but was now seen on nearly every man in uniform, many of them trench watches; Ingersoll's book of 1919 says millions were strapped to the wrists of soldiers and sailors.^1, 2

Doubts lingered. A Waltham booklet of 1919 prints a letter from Lieutenant Charles M. Burgess, who was told at the front 'that a wrist watch was not dependable and to rely on my pocket watch', and found his 17-jewel Waltham wristwatch the more reliable. It is a testimonial in an advertisement.³⁵

American makers advertised the change: the same Waltham booklet illustrates a 10-ligne 'Silk Ribbon Wristlet', and Ingersoll's Radiolite luminous watch, the book says, went to war on soldiers' wrists.^2, 35

Donzé, an economic historian, calls the change 'primarily about marketing': makers invented two new markets, the ladies' watch as a fashion accessory and the cheap everyday watch.³

Cheap watches drove the volume. Until 1927 Swiss exports of precious-metal wristwatches equalled those in steel and nickel; afterwards the precious-metal share collapsed to under 5 per cent by 1935, while steel and nickel watches, many of them simple Roskopf models, grew.^3, 36

Switzerland's network of suppliers could launch new small calibres and cases quickly, Donzé argues, while the big American makers were slow: Waltham stayed with pocket watches, and its failure to adapt contributed to its bankruptcy in 1949.^3, 5

Small movements were the technical problem, since small calibres tended to lose reliability. Jaeger-LeCoultre says its Duoplan of 1925, built on two levels by Henri Rodanet of the Jaeger firm, kept a large balance in a small watch, and that its Calibre 101 has 98 parts weighing about a gram.^9, 10

Sizes were counted in lignes (one ligne is about 2.26 mm). Waltham's booklet of 1919 offers a 10-ligne silk-ribbon wristlet, a 7½-ligne watch whose movement is 'actually smaller than a dime in diameter', and a 'Cadet' strap watch 'for men'; Eugène Meylan's self-winding module of 1930 was designed to fit almost any 8.75-ligne (19.74 mm) movement.^{1, 35, 38}

Switzerland also exported the know-how. Donzé counts that by 1927 movements without cases made up 30.1 per cent of Swiss export volume, against 5.4 per cent in 1890, and American firms such as Bulova (in Biel from 1911) and Gruen (on the Aegler board from 1927) built their wristwatch businesses on Swiss parts; in Japan, Rodolphe Schmid's workshop became part of Citizen in 1930.³

Geneva's old houses stood apart. Donzé says Patek Philippe and Vacheron Constantin refused mass-produced blanks, and quotes a Patek director, François Antoine Conty, speaking in 1926 of 'the junk watches of La Chaux-de-Fonds'. Patek nevertheless made complicated wristwatches: its timeline lists a ladies' five-minute repeater in 1916 and a perpetual calendar in 1925.^3, 28

The wristwatch freed the case from the round shape of the pocket. Cartier says its Tank 'was born in 1917' from the idea of 'letting go of the traditional round watch', with the case running into the strap between two parallel brancards.^40, 41

Accounts of the Tank's first years differ in detail: Cartier says the prototype went to General Pershing and the watch reached the market in 1919; Wikipedia says it was introduced in 1918 and entered production in 1919 with six pieces, its shape inspired by the Renault tanks on the Western Front.^41, 42

Rectangular watches became ordinary stock. A Longines advertisement of 1924 shows a round platinum pocket watch beside three rectangular wristwatches on leather and moiré straps, one set with diamonds and rubies, under the heading 'Les Montres et Bracelets Longines'.⁴³

The Reverso of 1931 is the Art Deco wristwatch built for sport. Jaeger-LeCoultre tells it as a challenge from British officers playing polo in India; Wikipedia names the dealer César de Trey and the French engineer René-Alfred Chauvot, whose case swivels over to protect the glass.^9, 10

Shaped cases mattered to engineers as well as designers: one of Hans Wilsdorf's patents of 1926 was for a shaped, octagonal case clamped by a screwed back and bezel, so that a non-round watch could also be sealed.^44, 45

A watch on the wrist met water, dust and knocks that a pocket watch did not. Wilsdorf's answer was the Oyster: Perregaux and Perret's screw-down crown, patented in 1925-26 and assigned to Wilsdorf, and Wilsdorf's own sealed-case patents of 1926. Rolex calls the Oyster of 1926 the first waterproof wristwatch.^{12, 14, 15, 16, 17}

That claim is disputed. Richard Watkins points to Dennison's English patents for a screwed bezel and back (1872) and a screw-down crown (1915), and Wikipedia cites a waterproof case patented by Charles Depollier eight years before the Oyster.^11, 46

In 1927 Rolex turned a swim into advertising. Mercedes Gleitze wore an Oyster in the Channel in October 1927 (Rolex and Wikipedia disagree about which of her two swims), and on 24 November Rolex took the front page of the Daily Mail for 'the Wonder Watch that Defies the Elements'.^{3, 46, 47, 48}

Self-winding came back from the eighteenth century. John Harwood of the Isle of Man filed a British patent with Harry Cutts on 7 July 1923 for a wristwatch wound by a swinging weight, whose case needed no opening at all; Fortis of Grenchen says it began series production in 1926, and the Swiss dictionary records an automatic calibre made at Grenchen that year.^{4, 18, 20, 49}

Rolex says it invented and patented the Perpetual rotor in 1931, a weight that turns a full circle; the Swiss dictionary dates Rolex's rotor watch to 1930, and Harwood disputed Rolex's later claim to the first automatic, which Rolex corrected, by Fortis's account, in 1956.^{14, 15, 20, 50}

Omega calls its Marine of 1932, a double case sealed with cork, the first commercially available divers' watch, the start of the dive watch.^51, 52

Knocks were the third enemy: a broken balance pivot was a common repair. Breguet's pare-chute of about 1790 is, by Breguet's account, the forerunner of modern shock protection; Incabloc's shock-absorbing jewel setting came from Fritz Marti and Georges Braunschweig at La Chaux-de-Fonds; the company dates the first patent to 1929 and the trademark to 1933, while Wikipedia gives 1934.^{53, 54, 55}

The numbers turned in the late 1920s. From Swiss foreign trade statistics, Donzé gives wristwatches 25 per cent of Swiss watch exports in 1920, 40 per cent in 1927 and 85 per cent by 1940.³

Wikipedia, citing a 1986 history of the wristwatch by Kahlert, Mühe and Brunner, says Switzerland exported as many wristwatches as pocket watches in 1930 and nearly twice as many in 1934; these figures sit between Donzé's.^1, 3

Swiss customs counted the two separately by then. A lecture by E. Strahm of the Société Générale de l'Horlogerie Suisse in December 1934 gives export prices for wristwatches and pocket watches in metal, silver and gold, and shows pocket watches losing value faster in the slump: a nickel pocket watch fell from fr. 6.34 to 3.72 between 1929 and 1933, while a metal wristwatch fell from 7.47 to 6.20.³⁶

The Swiss dictionary sums up the decade: in the 1920s the wristwatch left the military sphere and 'dethroned' the pocket watch. In the United States the National WWII Museum says wristwatches were outselling pocket watches by substantial margins by the end of the 1920s.^4, 5

The pocket watch held its ground where rules required it. American railroad standards of the early twentieth century called for open-faced 16- or 18-size pocket watches, and railroad men were still having their watches inspected at Chicago's Union Station in 1943.^{5, 22, 23}

Even the word changed: by Wikipedia's account, 'wristlet' gave way to 'wristwatch' in the early 1930s.⁷