Over the centuries clocks have been used as a symbol of status by those who own them. Their precision, elegance and convenience are just some of the attributes that clocks and watches represent. Often they are bought solely for aesthetic pleasure and at other times they are bought because of their technical attributes like being accurate to the last second or even millisecond. This is what makes clocks and watches so collectible and in some cases they can command lots of cash.

Here we will take a look at clocks, from their inaccurate primitive beginnings, through their development into today’s high precision timepieces.

It is interesting to think that many of the top watch brands today have been around for longer than a 100 years, while some have even been around as long as 250 years. I guess it takes some time to get good at making watches.

People keeping track of time, has been around almost for as long as human civilization. The Egyptians first implemented the 24 hour day in 2000BC they tracked time using water clocks. Water clocks work by measuring the amount of water that runs from a water tank in a time period. Water clocks are however notoriously inaccurate. Shortly after that  hourglasses and candle clocks began to be used.

Around the sixteenth century BC they started to track time by using shadow watches and a system of measuring time by the position of the stars was also developed.

Before the 1600 watches where too heavy for people to carry aroundwith them. At the time watches used a combination of gravity and clockwork to keep track of time.

In the begining the wristwatch was considered a women’s stylish fashion accessory. Men used pocket watches. Watch makers 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 wristwatches were made of steel, then later brass. They had no balance springs and were notoriously 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 in England was named the zero meridian, a worldwide accepted starting point for the world’s time zones. After 1900, advances in metallurgy improved the mechanisms, primarily because the balance spring was sensitive to temperature and position. Stylish men’s watches.

A more recent development in watch making has been from Casio. The have started making watches that automatically update their time from an central broadcasting centre. This makes the new watches very accurate. Stylish men’s watches.