“It all started with Henlein,” I said. “Nuremburg. Fifteen-o-five. Made what they called a ‘pomander watch.’ Interesting little things. Ornamental balls, made of brass. Wouldn’t look out of place on a Christmas tree. But those Germans wore them like pendants. Called ‘em ‘Nuremberg eggs.’ But here’s the funny thing: these early watches couldn’t tell the time. Not well, anyway. They’d get screwy and be off up to several hours per day! Useless. But folks liked ‘em, ya know? ‘Specially the nobles. Wore those little brass jinglets like jewelry—didn’t care a lick that they couldn’t tell ten ‘o’clock from four. Just liked that they tick-tick-ticked.

“But that’s what watches were at the time: a novelty. They started making clock-watches in all sorts of shapes. Animals, books, flowers, you name it. There was even something called a ‘Death’s head watch,’ a clock in the shape of a skull! Can you imagine? Who would want a clock like that? Staring at you through hollow sockets, ticking away the precious, fleeting moments of your mortal life. I just can’t figure.

“Any-who, a few hundred years pass with people perfectly pleased with their defective timekeepers until someone attached this thing called the balance spring to this other thing called a balance wheel. A lot more accurate. Instead of hours of error, it got it down to minutes. Who gets the credit? Well, they’re still arguing about that. One guy said it was his idea, another guy said it was his. Tale as old as time. Who mixed chocolate and peanut butter, ya know?

“So, watches are getting more accurate, but they’re also changing in design. No more brass balls or skull clocks. Fellas want to keep their watches tucked safely away now. And you know why? Waistcoats. No kidding. Charles II, King of England, popularized waistcoats in the seventeenth century. Thanks to the Merry Monarch, gents had waistcoat pockets but nothing to put in ‘em. Hence, the pocket watch. 

“From there, watches kept improving over the next few centuries—these are mechanical watches, mind you, not the fancy-pants LED watches we have today that’ll remote start your car or order you a Caramel Macchiato—all sorts of nifty fixes. Temperature compensation, going barrels, lever escapement (that was an important one, but the maker’s name escapes me—Fudge or Budge or something like that?), jewel bearings, bimetallic construction, and more.

“With all the adjustments, pocket watches got nice and thin. They became the new style, and the richie-riches all had to have the new style. They started making fun of the poor fellas who could only afford the old bulky ones.

“The nerve, right? If these fat cats had lived a hundred years earlier, they probably would have had their own skull clock—again, can you imagine? I know some folks are morbid, but still…

“So, we’re into the 1800s and we’ve come a long way from Nuremburg. You’ve got watchmakers all over the world. Switzerland, a’ course. Britain, too. But things really took off in the good ol’ US of A. Right here in America, Massachusetts to be precise (and we should be since we’re discussing time) they started using interchangeable parts to mass produce watches. All sorts of companies sprung up to get in on the action—Waltham Watch Company, Ansonia, Waterbury Clock Co. (technically they’re still around, part of Timex today), Elias Ingraham, E.N. Welch Manufacturing, Sessions, Kroeber, New Haven. There are some others…I’ll have to tell you later when I remember ‘em.

“Friend, I see your foot’s a tap-tap-tapping faster than the second hand on a watch. You’re probably worried the train won’t get here on time. But don’t fret! It was the railroads that made watches’ timekeeping get better in the first place! They had to schedule their trains, see, and they needed accurate watches to do it. Finally, in the early days of the twentieth century, we got watches that were only off by a few seconds per day. But there was another change coming just ‘round the bend.

“You’re probably thinking, ‘all this information about pomander and pocket watches is great, but I don’t see many of those around these days.’ And you’re right. You don’t see ‘em around much anymore (and I hope you wouldn’t see many skull clocks, either). You see wristwatches. That’s been the dominant watch in the modern era.

“But in the beginning, wristwatches were only worn by women. They go back a ways—some say the first wristwatch was made in 1810 for the Queen of Naples. That was Napoleon’s little sister. But the wristwatch was a lady’s watch. So, what changed that perception? War!

“See, the military needed to synchronize their maneuvers without signaling. The enemy could recognize signals. So they built their tactics around time. But it ain’t a breeze to check your pocket watch while you’re being shot at. That’s why they started slapping wristwatches on their soldiers. British officers used wristwatches while fighting the Burmese and the Boers. But it was the Great War that sealed it. Dubya-dubya-one. Service wristwatches were all over the place. Public perceptions were changed. By the 1930s, there were fifty wristwatches for every pocket watch. In 1961, the wristwatch traveled to space with Yuri Gagarin. Railways, war, and waistcoats. The catalysts of progress.

“’Bout this time you had the first electric watches, with solenoids and oscillating circuits. But those couldn’t stand up to the new innovation: the quartz watch. It was like Herman’s Hermits against the Beatles, if you take my meaning. No contest. Suddenly, everything was made with quartz, so much so that the industry even had a crisis named after it. Quartz was in, and quartz was good—the Japanese made a quartz watch that was accurate down to the second for a whole year. Heck, I’ve even read about an atomic wristwatch that’ll keep accurate time down to one second for over a thousand years. Not that you’d be able to test that claim yourself, mind you. But it sounds nice. Sounds like progress.

“And that pretty much brings us to today. We got more watches than you can shake a stick at. And most of them are smart now, too. Full of megahertz and flash memory and RAM. Will tell you the weather, if your stocks are up or down, and who won the game last night. Keeping time is almost beside the point. Yessir, we’ve come a long way from the days of little brass balls that couldn’t track the time.

“Anyway, there you go.”

“Thanks,” said the man next to me, “but I just asked for the time.” 

Copyright © 2024 by Alan Eckelberry. All rights reserved.