Over the ages watches have been used as a status symbol by those who wear them. Their precision, elegance and convenience are just some of the attributes that clocks and watches represent. Regularly they are bought purely for aesthetic pleasure while at other times they are bought because of their technical attributes like being precise to the last second or even millisecond. This is what makes watches and clocks so desirable and in some cases they can command high sums of cash.
In this article we will take a look at wristwatches, from their inaccurate primitive beginnings, through their evolution into today’s high precision timepieces. Buy Casio watches online.
It is interesting to think that many of the top watch brands today have been around for more than a century, while some have even been around as long as 250 years. I suppose it takes some time to get good at making wristwatches.
People keeping track of time, has been around almost for as long as human civilization. The Egyptians first implemented the twenty four hour day in 2000BC they kept time using water clocks. These clocks work by measuring the amount of water that runs from a water tank in a time period. Water clocks are however notoriously inaccurate. After that candle clocks and hourglasses started to be used.
Around the 16th century BC they started to measure time by using shadow clocks and a system of measuring time by the position of the stars was also developed.
Before the 15th century watches where too large for their owners to carry around with them. At the time clocks used a combination of clockwork and gravity to keep track of time.
In the beginning the wristwatch was though of as a women’s stylish fashionable accessory. Gentlemen used pocket watches. Watch producers did not like wristwatches because they where too small for them to design really accurate wristwatches. This all changed in the 19th century when soldiers started using wristwatches, it was easier in a battle than to look for your pocket watch. Claims that wristwatches where feminine stopped and more men started using them.
The first watches were made from steel, then later brass. They had no balance springs and were very inaccurate. Many of them only had an hour arm not a minute one. Watches made a large leap in accuracy in 1704 when the French started using rubies in watches to improve accuracy.
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 affected by temperature and position. Buy Casio watches online.
A more recent development in watch technology has been from Casio. The have started making watches that automatically update their time from an atomic clock broadcasting center. This makes these new watches very accurate.
