Viewing the evolution of watches and horology.

Timekeeping features a long history that continues to be written today.

It has just really been in recent decades, with the growth of mobile devices such as cellphones, that the watch has had a competitor for personal time-telling. But, watches have been a significant part of our society for centuries and for many people they remain an essential product, as Kering chairman and CEO François-Henri Pinault will be able to inform you. The first watches emerged in the late 1500s as mostly decorative, inaccurate variations of clocks. It was just in the following century that there had been appearances of unornamented watches. Over time they became more precise, going from being around within 30 minutes accuracy a day to within a few seconds. Although the internal technology of types of watches proceeded to build up, the exterior stayed largely in the form of the pocket watch until the wristwatch started to be manufactured just a little more than a hundred years ago. This made the watch a far more practical device in addition to a more accessible fashion accessory.


It might appear like the time telling devices we utilise today have now been around forever, but in fact for a lot of our history we utilised a wide range of alternative timepieces. As The Swatch Group CEO Nick Hayek will likely be well conscious of, many cultures experimented with different instruments to be able to make an effort to tell the time. Some of the oldest timekeeping products are sundials as well as the water clock. Sundials would inform the time using shadows cast by the sun's rays, while water clocks held water that would take a certain period of time to empty from one end of the clock to another. The same concept to water clocks is the hourglass, which utilises sand rather than water. Another instance from pre-modern ages is the incense clock, which creates a fragrance for a certain length of time.

Clocks are among the oldest devices for time measurement that are still in regular use around the world. As Richemont chairman Johann Rupert will know, their birth heralded the modern age of horology. Nonetheless, they didn't arrive completely created in the manner that they're now, because they went through many developments over the centuries, starting in the late medieval period. The first clocks were mechanical and the earliest form they took was as the bell-striking alarm, used to alert monastery employees to toll the bell. Weight driven clocks came next and were much more accurate as timekeeping pieces, with most developments for several centuries basically being an enhancement on this system. The pendulum clock then exceeded all the mechanical clocks until the more recent innovations of the electric clock, quartz timer, and atomic clock.

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