Watches - Men's Watches - Replica Watches

Use the above Navigation for information on more specific types and brands of Watches

Watches - Used to keep track of time. Time is one of the most important things to know, it can be the difference of live and death in some situations. The earliest watches we know of were in the early 1600's. Before the early 1600's, the main problem with producing watches - A portable method of timekeeping, was the driving power (in the 20th century we use batteries). Typically in this day in age, a clock was driven by a set of weights, and thus a watch of this type would be very impractical to carry.

The Earliest watch was made by 15 florins, in the year 1524. This is currently the earliest date with record of a watch being produced. Other watches started appearing in the mid 1550's, and were from Germany and France - The English and Swiss watches did not start appearing just yet, their watches started appearing towards of the end of the 16th century (1580's)

These first watches were very innacurate. They did not have a minute hand, and must be wound up twice a day. At first the movements were made of steel. but brass came into the mix soon after. These first movements were also straight-verge movements, and they did not contain balance springs. By the start of the 17th century, Astronomical data and dates were being displayed on watches, even though timekeeping itself was still very poor.

In the mid to late 1600's, watches started becoming more and more like everyday jewelry. Watches started being made out of precious metals like gold, and silver. Many got these watches engraved, pierced or enameled as further decorations. By the late 1600's, women started wearing watches, and their watches came in exotic ships and lucrative shapes.

In the early 1700's, the innacuracy that has plagues watches timekeeping, was finally fixed. In 1675 a spiral balance spring was finally used. This took the innacuracy on watches from 10's of minutes, to seconds. There is a bit of a dispute as to who actually was the first person to do this, Hook and Huygens were both were both working with watches and springs at this time.

Ancient Watch

In this picture you are looking at one of the earlier pocketwatches. This is a pair cased watch, and it has a balance-spring from this time. This watch is from london, and was made sometime between the years of 1675-1680. This watch was manufactured by Henricus Jones, and features a barrow endless-screw regulator, and it also has an expanding minute hand. This was one of the first watches to be accurate right up to the minute, because it contains a spiral balance spring, that came out right during that time.

Watches are still becoming more and more fashionable, and men starting wearing them in their coat pocket, this was the first appearance of the pocket watch. These watches were attached to a chain, and kept in a pocket for safe keeping instead of the watches around ones neck like a pendant. In the years 1710 or so, english watchmakers found a way to embed jewels as bearing. This was rare until about the year 1725, and then it was common to see a large diamond endstone that was mounted in the cock. By the 1800's, watches had chronometers, and watches were able to measure other things such as latitude and longititude. Since watches were now getting more and more complex, some other changes started occuring, now they added a seconds hand to watches. Jewelling was now much more extensivly used, with some very large jewels starting to be placed on the visible plate.

In around 1945, wrist watches started getting more complicated, and were able to do things not previously available in their pocketwatch counterparts. One of the main complications was automated winding, so now you did not have to remember to wind your watch twice a day anymore, this was a huge advancement. The chronograph also became available, which also had daterwork, moonwork and an alarm! Watches also started to be made more situational and functional, and waterproof watches, shockproof watches, and watches able to perform under extreme levels of gravity, pressure and vacuum were also produced.

Seiko Chronograph Watch
	This is a picture of a chronograph watch, displaying the information that was now able to be displayed on watches. This model was also waterproof, so divers and underwater-mechanics would be able to use these watches on the job. These watch was made in 1970's, and was battery operated.

In the year 1952, there became an alternative to the automatic watch. New watches could now be powered by batteries. The electronic watch, which what it did was replace the escapment, with a tuning fork that had electronic vibrations. This electronic battery powered watch was a completely new concept. This concept changed the number of beats from 2.5 beats a second to about 2.5 million beats per second! This new concept was adopted and furthered in by the Asian Watch industries, japan more specificly. The way the japenese designed their electronic watches, allowed them to be cheap, very accurate and mass produced in the millions.

By the 1970's, the electronic watches that it nearly replaced the mechanical watch entirely. The Italians were able to bring the market back with mechanical watches, the market is now once again flourishing again for mechanical watches, in the upper marketplace. Nowadays around 30% of watches are mechanical.