Vintage Watches and Wristwatches

No one really needs a wristwatch anymore. With smartphones in our pockets and purses—increasingly, they are also strapped to our wrists—it’s easier than ever to answer the question, “Hey! Anybody got the time?” But it wasn’t all that long ago when time was not on everyone’s side, and the need to know if one was early or late for a very important date spurred an industry to manufacture what are essentially portable clocks. Pocket watches were the obvious first solution, but in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, these handheld horological devices were replaced by even smaller timepieces that could be worn on the wrist, which made them as fashionable as a bracelet, with the added benefit of freeing the hands. Women got the first wristwatch in 1868, when Patek Philippe mounted a small watch with a white enamel face onto a rectangular slab of gold, which was accented with rose-cut diamonds and secured to a gold, grooved bracelet. The response was not exactly a stampede of customers; it wasn’t until 1876 that Patek Philippe sold that first wristwatch to Countess Koscowicz of Hungary. Men had to wait until the beginning of the 20th century for their wristwatch. According to the creation myth surrounding the invention of a wristwatch for men, it was in 1904 that a Brazilian aviator named Alberto Santos-Dumont complained to his friend Louis Cartier about how difficult it was to fumble around with his pocket watch during his short test flights. In response, Cartier made his friend a square wristwatch with a flat face, and called it the Santos. That wristwatch led to the acceptance of the devices in France and then elsewhere, and by World War I, wristwatches were pressed into service by the military, whose troops found them easier to use than pocket watches. With the wristwatch’s place on male and female wrists secure, the years between the world wars were devoted to improving the accuracy and features of these timepieces. By 1923, Patek Philippe had created the first split-seconds chronograph wristwatch, which recorded intervals of time like a stopwatch. That same year, Breitling developed the first chronograph with a push button that made start and return-to-zero functions simple. In 1926, Swiss watchmaker Vacheron Constantin gave one of its George V Royal Presentation Aviator’s Chronographs to Admiral Byrd to mark his flight that year to the North Pole. Along with Heuer, a Swiss watchmaker that introduced chronographic functions to its wristwatches around 1913, these companies would be revered for their technical innovations throughout the 1920s and ’30s. For example, in 1934, a Breitling wristwatch featuring a second return-to-zero pushpiece made it possible for pilots to measure multiple, successive short durations, which led the Royal Air Force to name Breitling its official supplier in 1936. Which is not to say that Breitling owned the aviator market. The same year Breitling got the Royal Air Force account, Longines introduced a wrist chronograph for pilots. None other than Howard Hughes was wearing a Longines chronograph when he broke the speed record for a flight around the world in 1938. Equally exciting during these decades were the changes being made to the design of wristwatches. After World War I, Cartier introduced the Tank, whose rectangular metal case mimicked the parallel tracks of the impressive machines that had helped Allies win the war. Though designed as a watch for men, women quickly claimed it, prompting Cartier designers to set diamonds into the case, elongate it, and give it a curve so that it fit more comfortably, and looked better, on smaller wrists. Other ladies wristwatches became armatures for a range of gemstones, and featured jewel-encrusted covers to protect their petite dials. In addition to Patek Philippe, companies such as Bulova, Elgin, Gruen, Hamilton, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Omega, Rolex, and Vacheron & Constantin excelled in the manufacture of ladies wristwatches. Of the jewelers who purchased watch movements from Swiss manufacturers, Cartier led a pack that included Tiffany & Co. and Van Cleef & Arpels. If keeping track of discrete units of time was one measure of the advances in wristwatch technology, so was the device’s ability to keep ticking while wet. In 1926, Rolex created the first waterproof watch, the Oyster, which was worn by Mercedes Gleitze in 1927 when she became the first British woman to swim across the English Channel. Even tougher was Omega’s Marine, which, in 1937, was certified to keep time accurately at a depth of 135 meters, making it the first dive wristwatch. As most conflicts have done, World War II pushed technology, including in the realm of wristwatches. In 1942, Heuer introduced the Chronomat, the first chronograph wristwatch with a slide rule built into the bezel. Also in 1942, Omega debuted the Chronomètre, a handsome, highly accurate wristwatch with a silvered dial, Arabic numerals, black wire hands, and a water-resistant stainless-steel case. After the war, men’s watches became more elaborate, offering new features such as calendars and built-in radios. In the 1950s, chronographs got especially fancy, as seen in Girard-Perregaux’s Mysterieuse, whose hour and minute hands were fixed on small discs that rotated within the wristwatch’s face. For Omega, the ’50s were the decade of the Speedmaster, which was selected in the ’60s by NASA for use on by its astronauts. Also in the 1960s, Zenith’s Pilot went head-to-head with the Rolex Explorer, and by 1969 Zenith had launched its El Primero chronograph movement. Similarly, the 1950s and ’60s were very good for dive watches. Jaeger-LeCoultre introduced the Geophysic Chronometer, as well as a waterproof version of the Memovox called the Deep Sea Alarm. In 1967, IWC countered with water-resistant Aquatimer, while Doxa came out with the Sub 300T, which featured a U.S. Navy air-dive table on its bezel and a brilliant orange dial to aid divers going as deep as 300 meters. Doxa also made a silver-dialed model called the Searambler and a yellow one called the Divingstar. But Rolex was not about to give up its status as a key maker of dive wristwatches. Indeed, perhaps the most collectible vintage dive wristwatch of the postwar era is a military wristwatch from the 1970s, the Rolex 5517 Submariner, which the company made for the British Royal Navy. Only about 1,200 of these watches were produced, and perhaps only a few hundred of those survived.