History of Design: Smart watch

 HISTORY OF SMART WATCHES

My Smart watch

I decided to choose a smartwatch as the object of my research because I've always found it fascinating how far technology has advanced and how everything is now at our fingertips. Though that wasn't always the case. Every product began as an idea. I wanted to utilise this occasion to examine how the concept of a watch changed over time to become the smart watches we use today which has become a symbol of luxury and style.

THE EVOLUTION 

The Old English word woecce, which meant "watchman," is where the word "watch" first appeared. It described how town watchmen used watches to keep track of their shifts.

 Clock Watch 

The earliest watches were transitional in size between clocks and watches, and they were created in the 16th century, starting in Germany.
These "clock-watches" were worn around the neck or attached to garments. They were ornately etched, heavy brass boxes with a cylindrical shape like a drum that were several inches in diameter. Only an hour hand was available. The face was not made of glass, but rather typically had a hinged brass cover that was ornamentally perforated with grillwork to display the time without opening.

The purpose of these early clock-watches was not to display the time. Their verge and foliot movements were so inaccurate—possibly many hours of mistakes each day—that they were essentially unusable. They were created for the nobles as ornaments and trinkets. Accurate timekeeping was of very little significance; watches were admired more for their exquisite decoration, unique shapes, or intriguing mechanisms.

 

 

 Pocket watch

 Men started to carry their watches in their pockets rather than as pendants when fashions evolved in the 17th century. The fact that watches of the era were notoriously prone to fouling from exposure to the weather meant that carrying them securely in the pocket was the only reliable way to keep them safe from harm. This was not merely a matter of taste or prejudice. Their shape evolved to take on the traditional pocketwatch shape, which is rounded and flat with no sharp corners. Beginning in 1610, glass was employed to cover the watch's face.

 

Wristwatch
Wristwatches were almost exclusively worn by ladies in the beginning. Toward the end of the 19th century, men in the military became the first to wear wristwatches. Officers started wearing their pocket timepieces on their wrist since it was obvious that utilizing them while engaged in combat or mounted on a horse was impractical.
Early wristwatches were really just regular pocket watches with a leather strap, but by the turn of the 20th century, manufacturers had started making wristwatches specifically for wrist wear.
A widespread market for watches was created in the post-First World War era as a result of the First World War's profoundly altered popular ideas of their propriety. During the War, service timepieces were made with luminous displays and unbreakable glass specifically for the rigors of trench warfare. 

 

          Electric watch

During the 1950s, the first generation of electric-powered watches appeared. These kept time with the help of a solenoid-driven balance wheel.  A wheel train continued to mechanically move the hands. Self-winding mechanisms, shockproof balancing pivots, and break-resistant "white metal" mainsprings were common in mechanical watches. Jewel inflation stemmed from the jewel craze, and watches with up to 100 jewels were produced.

 

Quartz watch

The Seiko 35 SQ Astron was the first quartz timepiece to go into production. Nobody could patent the entire quartz wristwatch movement because it was developed with help from the Japanese, Americans, and Swiss. This allowed other manufacturers to compete in the rapidly expanding and developing quartz watch market, ending the nearly 100-year reign of the mechanical wristwatch legacy in less than ten years.

The quartz watch was a breakthrough advance in watch technology when it was introduced in 1969. The "quartz crisis" was the process through which quartz timepieces replaced mechanical watches as the dominant product on the market in the 1980s. Even though mechanical watches are still popular, quartz mechanisms are found in the vast majority of timepieces as of 2020. In 1970, Pulsar created the first digital electronic watch with an LED display.

 

 

Smart watch 

A smartwatch is a computer that can be used as a phone, portable music player, or personal digital assistant. It is a wireless digital device that is worn on the wrist. In the early 2010s, some possessed a processor and a mobile operating system that could run a range of mobile apps, giving them some of the general features of a smartphone.

The Linux Watch, created in 1998 by Steve Mann, was the first wristwatch. Seiko, Samsung, IBM, Microsoft and Apple then produced their own versions of smart watches and continued to develop their models. 

 

 Citations:

History of watches - Wikipedia

https://www.bogoff.com/pocket/5887.html

https://prowatches.com/hamilton-ventura-the-worlds-first-electric-watch/