Mens Wristwatches
Peter Henlein’s invention of the first portable clock in Nuremberg, Germany in the year 1504 marked a major milestone in the history of time keeping. Those early creations were usually carried either in a trouser or vest pocket attached to the end of a chain, or they were worn as a pendant attached to the end of a chain or a cord suspended around the neck. It was in the late 1500s that watches worn on the wrist started making sporadic appearances because wearing them as a pendant or concealing them at the end of a chain or cord in a trouser or vest pocket was still the accepted and popular mode of fashion. Queen Elizabeth I is said to have worn a watch encased in a bracelet. Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) the French mathematician and philosopher is said to be one of the first people to have worn a wristwatch. He attached his pocket watch to his wrist with a cord. Patek Phillipe the Swiss watchmaker invented the first wristwatch in 1868. The wristwatch was not embraced by society in the beginning and only women wore wristlets as they were called then, as a fashion accessory.
Mens Wristwatches
Delicately hand-crafted, gem-encrusted wristwatches were worn by wealthy women and women of royalty as an expensive jewellery piece. The mainstream thinking at the time was that the wristlets could not be accurate enough nor could they endure the rigours of daily human activity to be considered a serious timepiece and was therefore a fleeting fancy.
Louis Cartier, the French jeweller set out in 1904 to help his Brazilian friend, Mr. Alberto Santos-Dumont, an aviation pioneer, overcome the impractical and inconvenient mode of pocket watches while flying, by creating the very first of mens wristwatches. Cartier named his legendary first mens wristwatch the Santos, which was designed with a leather strap, a buckle and a distinctive square bezel. This then gradually became the new acceptable mode of wearing mens wristwatches for all practical intents and purposes and thus became the standard till this day for mens wristwatches.
Mens Wristwatches
Military leaders seized upon the practical advantage of mens wristwatches over the earlier favoured pocket watches with the approach of World War I. Soldiers could easily tell the time with a quick glance at their wristwatch rather than to laboriously dig into pockets while in battle. Large orders were placed with leading watchmakers to supply troops and military personnel with durable, accurate mens wristwatches with large numerals, luminous hands and markers with a protective metal grid. Those victorious troops went home at the end of the war with their souvenir trench men’s wristwatches which were named for the trench warfare they were used at. The Cartier tank watch, created in 1917 by Louis Cartier was so named to describe the newly introduced armoured cars on the Western front. The public’s perception and opinion soon changed with these events and application of the wristwatch was soon to become the universally accepted standard for both men and women.
Mens wristwatches were continuously improved and modernised from then onwards. The many leading brands successfully introduced styles, models and shapes to further enrich the culture. Many more important features of mens wristwatches were introduced by the leading manufacturers in the 1920s. Heur (now TAG Heur) began making a reputation for precise timing particularly in aviation and auto racing. They utilised one dial and a single casing for the stopwatch and wristwatch they ingeniously combined. John Harwood developed a self-winding mechanism which he successfully patented and have featured in designs and brands of mens wristwatches alongside those with quartz movement till now.
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