The History of the Pocket Watch

It all began in the year 1485 when Leonardo da Vinci sketches a fusee for a clock. A Fusee is a cone shaped pulley with a spiral groove around it, wound with a cord or chain which is attached to the mainspring barrel.

It was not until 39 years later that the first pocket watch was created in Germany by Peter Henlein in 1524. Others appears in 1548 and more were produced in Switzerland and England after the year 1575. As the love affair with this amazing new technology exploded,the main problem was the driving mechanism.

Typically, weights were used, which made portable watches impractical, but it was a period of great advancement and innovation. The first movements were made of steel, then later brass. They had no balance springs and were notoriously inaccurate. The watches had only an hour hand and had to be wound twice daily.

Soon the spiral leaf mainspring appeared, the greatest innovation at the time as it allowed long-term power without weights. Because of a difference in timing between the long arcs and the short arcs, accuracy could only be improved by using a limited portion of the mainspring.

Germany produced a watch with a cam at the end of a barrel arbor to compensate for variations in spring tension, but it was the English and French solution to use the fusee. This stopped the watch during winding to prevent over oscillation of the balance wheel. Additional stops were included as regulators.

With time came greater technology, and with the advent of better steel works to create more precise gears and springs, it didn't take very long to create an accurate pocket watch.

To make sure the watch kept its accuracy over long periods of time, bearings were made from jewels (usually synthetic sapphires or rubies).

Form watches became popular in the 1600s, with cases shaped like animals and objects. Religious themes were especially popular.

Although there were few technical improvements, watches became more like pieces of jewelry. It wasn't until 1704 that the first rubies were used in watch movements to create more accurate time pieces.

By 1750, enamel was used on watch dials making them more visible in low light. The first self-winding movement was invented in 1780, by Abraham Perrelet, and in 1820 Thomas Prest registered a patent for a self-winding watch.

In America, in 1809, the first watch manufacturer was Luther Goddard of Shrewsbuy, Massachussetts. In 1848, Louis Brandt opened a workshop in La Chaux-de-Fonds which was to later become the Omega Watch company. It was the Americans, around 1850, who were first to go into mass production, with mixed results, the main companies being Waltham, Elgin and Hamilton.

In 1884, Greenwich, England was named the zero meridian, a worldwide acceptance of a starting point for global time zones. After 1900, advances in metallurgy improved the mechanisms, primarily because the balance spring was sensitive to temperature and position.

Self-compensating balances were made with bi-metallic properties to compensate for high and low tempartures, and eventually a balance was created that could compensate for middle temperature errors.

In 1905 the Rolex Watch Company was started by Hans Wilsdorf. 1914 saw the first wristwatch with an alarm. Seiko was started in Tokyo in 1924