![]() If the Apple Watch and similar smartwatches succeed, the wrist could experience a resurgence.Īlexis McCrossen, a history professor at Southern Methodist University and the author of Marking Modern Times: A History of Clocks, Watches, and Other Timekeepers in American Life, traces the story of the wristwatch back to the spread of “portable clocks,” or large pocket watches, in the 1700s, when “people want to start carrying the time around with them they’re not content just to look at the public clocks in whatever village or town they might end up in.” These watches were made progressively smaller and better-secured with features like chains or straps, and were often seen primarily not as a timepiece but as a reliable vehicle for investing personal savings. Over the past century or so, people have kept time mainly in their pockets, then on their wrists, and now back in their pockets. They’re often about something else, too, even if that something else influences the perception of time itself. It was a reminder that advances in time-telling technology aren’t exclusively about finding a better way to tell time. A technology conceived in war had become too technologically sophisticated for soldiers. “The use of wearables with Internet access, location information, and voice-calling functions should be considered a violation of national security regulations when used by military personnel,” a Chinese military newspaper quoted a government agency as declaring, in apparent reference to gadgets like the Apple Watch. In China, where the newly released Apple Watch is quickly becoming a controversial, in-demand status symbol, the authorities reportedly banned the device. This month brought strange echoes of that history. And civilians, seeing the wristwatch’s practical benefits over the pocket watch, were parroting the behavior. BrooksĮuropean soldiers were outfitting the device with unbreakable glass to survive the trenches and radium to illuminate the display at night. ![]() Rifling through your pocket for a watch was not advisable in the chaos of the trenches. “The only practical way in which they can wear them is on the wrist, where the time can be ascertained readily, an impossibility with the old style pocket watch.” Improvements in communications technologies had enabled militaries to more precisely coordinate their maneuvers, and coordination required soldiers to discern the time at a glance. “The telephone and signal service, which play important parts in modern warfare, have made the wearing of watches by soldiers obligatory,” the Times observed, two years into World War I. Vaudeville artists and moving-picture actors have utilized it as a funmaker, as a ‘silly ass’ fad.”īut the wristwatch was a “silly-ass fad” no more. “Until recently,” the paper observed, “the bracelet watch has been looked upon by Americans as more or less of a joke. Time had migrated to the human wrist, and the development required some explaining. On July 9, 1916, The New York Times puzzled over a fashion trend: Europeans were starting to wear bracelets with clocks on them.
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