The Revolution on the Wrist — How War Strapped a Watch to Men

Today, wearing a watch on the wrist is an ordinary sight for men and women alike. But at the beginning of the 20th century, if a grown man had walked the streets with a watch strapped to his wrist, he might well have drawn curious stares. At the time, the small watch worn on the wrist was called a ‘wristlet’ and was widely seen as a woman’s ornament. The proper gentleman’s watch was the pocket watch, tucked into a vest pocket and joined by a chain — that was the real thing. The watch on the wrist was feeble, fragile, and not a man’s thing — such an atmosphere truly existed. This episode is the story of the two forces that overturned that common sense: the ‘sky’ and ‘war.‘

The ‘Santos,’ born to fly through the sky

The first occasion that raised the wristwatch into the gentleman’s world lay not on the ground but in the sky. In the early 20th century, the darling of Paris high society was the aviator Alberto Santos-Dumont, born in Brazil. As he pursued the piloting of flying machines, he had a pressing trouble. While at the controls, both his hands were occupied, and to take a pocket watch from his pocket and check the time was something he could hardly do.

The one who received his request was his friend Louis Cartier, who led the jewelry house of ‘Cartier.’ Around 1904, Cartier is said to have devised, for the aviator, a watch that could be read while strapped to the wrist. This is the watch later called the ‘Santos.’ Its distinctive design — a square dial with ornamental screws showing on the bezel — is said to recall the rivets of the flying machines of the time, wearing the air of the age of the sky. And in 1906, when Santos-Dumont succeeded in flight before a watching crowd, a watch is said to have been on his wrist, told as one early known example of the ‘aviator’s wristwatch.’

Still, when the Santos first appeared in the world, only a very limited number of people could wear it. General sale had to wait until around 1911, and moreover it was a costly item made of precious metal. Though it was a symbol of the new age of the sky, the wristwatch had not yet taken firm root as a practical tool for men in any broad sense. What toppled that wall all at once was a far harsher event.

The trenches turned the wristwatch into a necessity

What turned the wristwatch into a necessity for men was the First World War, which began in 1914. The fighting in the mud-filled trenches differed in the very use of time from the wars that came before. To begin a bombardment all at once, to halt the attack at the moment one’s allies advanced — such coordination required the soldiers to share the same time down to the second.

Yet the pocket watch was far too inconvenient on the battlefield. Taking it from the pocket occupied one hand, and opening the lid, reading the time, and putting it away meant using the other hand as well. For a soldier who had to check the time in an instant while gripping his rifle and running, that act was not permissible. The advantage of the wristwatch, which let him read the time at a glance if strapped to the wrist, was plain to every eye.

Soldiers came to fit pocket watches with attachment fittings to strap them to the wrist, or to seek out watches made for the wrist from the start. Devices to endure the harshness of the trenches were born as well. To protect the easily broken glass crystal, watches fitted with a latticed metal cover, the so-called ‘shrapnel guard,’ also spread in this era as a feature of the time. Swiss watch makers are said to have answered this demand by supplying, one after another, watch cases fitted with lugs for the wrist. The native strength of the Swiss watch industry, which had grown up through the earlier episodes, here joined with the demands of the battlefield.

The soldiers who returned from the front no longer let go of the wristwatch that had kept them alive in the trenches. The watch on the wrist, once seen as a woman’s ornament, had become a practical tool that had passed through the fires of war, turned into a thing of men’s pride. After the war, the wristwatch spread rapidly to the masses, and the pocket watch slowly withdrew from the main stage.

Beyond the prejudice of the ‘feeble watch’

Even so, for the wristwatch to win full standing in the gentleman’s world, it had to clear one more wall. The deep-rooted prejudice that ‘the watch on the wrist cannot achieve accuracy, that it is a feeble thing.’ The arm is in constant motion, exposed to shock, sweat, and changes in temperature. Compared with the pocket watch that quietly ticks away the time within the pocket, the wristwatch, placed in a harsh environment, could not be trusted — so many people thought.

Against this prejudice, a single counter-proof was thrust forward. In 1914, a certain watch maker is said to have brought a small ladies’ wristwatch to Britain’s Kew Observatory and obtained the certification of accuracy considered the strictest of its day. That this authoritative institution, which tested the accuracy of naval timepieces, gave its highest grade to a small wristwatch is told as an event showing that even a wristwatch could achieve first-class accuracy. The maker who undertook this would later go on to rewrite the history of the watch with waterproofing and self-winding, but that story we will treat in detail a little further on in this series.

It should also be noted that the attempts at a practical men’s wristwatch did not necessarily begin suddenly in the 20th century. By one account, around 1880, the German navy is said to have ordered wristwatches for use aboard ship from a Swiss maker, which suggests that the field of the military had taken note of the practicality of the wristwatch from an early time. The history of the wristwatch was shaped little by little, not so much from the invention of any one person, but from the needs accumulated by the ‘fields that wished to free both hands’ — the sky, the sea, and the battlefield.

And so the wristwatch shed its origin as an ornament, flew through the sky, survived the battlefield, overcame the prejudice of accuracy, and rose to become a tool representative of the 20th century. Yet the story of the watch did not turn here toward utility alone. Around the same time, in Geneva, Switzerland, a quiet passion among craftsmen was flaring up in an entirely different direction — to push the watch toward the heights of art.