A Timekeeping Revolution Strapped to the Body
The wristwatch is one of the most successful objects ever made — a functional tool, a status symbol, a piece of personal jewellery, and a feat of miniaturised engineering, all wrapped around the human wrist. Yet for most of its history, wearing a watch on your wrist was considered either effeminate or eccentric. How did this small, strapped device conquer the world?
The Earliest Wristwatches: Jewellery First, Function Second
The first wristwatches appeared in the late 16th century, not as timekeeping devices for everyday use, but as fashionable accessories for aristocratic women. Queen Elizabeth I of England is said to have received one of the earliest examples — a small clock attached to a bracelet — as a gift. These "arm watches" were conversation pieces rather than practical instruments; their movements were too fragile and inaccurate for serious use.
For the next two centuries, pocket watches remained the serious option for anyone who actually needed to know the time. The wristwatch languished as a curiosity of the jeweller's art.
Military Necessity Changes Everything
The wristwatch's rise to dominance came through war. During the Boer War (1899–1902) and particularly World War One, soldiers discovered that reaching into a pocket for a watch while under fire — or while synchronising an artillery barrage — was dangerously slow. Wristlets, improvised holders that strapped a pocket watch to the wrist, became common in the trenches.
By the war's end, returning soldiers had normalised wristwatches for men. What had once seemed unmasculine was now associated with battlefield pragmatism. Watch manufacturers pivoted rapidly, and dedicated wristwatch movements — smaller, more robust, shock-resistant — began to be developed in earnest.
The Golden Age: 1920s–1970s
The interwar period produced some of the most celebrated wristwatch designs in history. The Cartier Tank (1917), inspired by the aerial silhouette of WWI tanks, established the rectangular case as a design icon. Rolex introduced the first waterproof wristwatch case, the Oyster, in 1926. Patek Philippe developed the perpetual calendar wristwatch. Swiss manufacturers, in particular, established a dominance in fine watchmaking that persisted for decades.
The post-war years brought new categories: the sports watch (Rolex Submariner, 1953), the pilot's watch, the chronograph. The wristwatch became the defining masculine accessory of the 20th century.
The Quartz Crisis: Near-Death and Survival
In 1969, Seiko unveiled the Astron — the world's first quartz wristwatch. Quartz movements kept time far more accurately than mechanical ones, and crucially, they were cheaper to produce. Through the 1970s, inexpensive, accurate quartz watches flooded the market, devastating the traditional Swiss watchmaking industry in what became known as the "Quartz Crisis." Dozens of famous Swiss manufacturers went bankrupt or merged.
The survivors did so by repositioning mechanical watches not as timekeeping tools, but as luxury objects — valued for their craftsmanship, heritage, and the romance of tiny mechanical gears rather than their accuracy.
The Modern Wristwatch: Mechanical vs. Digital vs. Smart
Today the wristwatch exists in three parallel worlds. Luxury mechanical watches from Swiss and Japanese makers command prices from hundreds to hundreds of thousands of pounds, valued as wearable art and investment pieces. Affordable quartz watches remain practical everyday tools. And smartwatches have introduced a new category entirely — the wrist as a health monitor, communication device, and notification hub.
Each represents a different relationship between people and time. That tension — between the measurable utility of a device and the emotional, cultural weight of an object — is what makes the wristwatch one of the most interesting objects of the modern era.