Watches For Men

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

Whether you collect the new high precision watches or ones that come from a past era, the fact is that over the years this hobby has become a high turnover business. And collecting watches is in a lot of circles regarded as a wise form of investing.

At the start of the last century the clocks that were available for men or women were firstly pocket clocks, and then clocks that held by a pendant attached to the lining of jackets or corsets. The advent of war, industrialization, and the development of the sport activities, brought over new trends which extended to not only the way we dressed, but also how we carried our clocks.

It is said that it was a nanny who invented wrist watches at around the end of the 19th century, who fixed a clock around her wrist by using a silk band. The first watches to be made were in fact smaller models of pocket clocks that were fitted with a leather strap. Once this product hit the market newer designs started to be produced based around this same concept.

It was Louis Cartier who first made the kind of watches we see today when he created a watch for a flying pioneer hero by the name Santos Dumont. By 1911 this same type of watch was on general sale. That same type of watch became the blueprint of what wrist watches look like to this day.

Soon after the design of wrist “clocks” began to diversify away from the classical round shape that had been in vogue up until that time. From the Cartier classical wrist watch other makes of watch started to emerge which were characterized by their shape. Movado is the perfect example of these new designs when it came out with the “Polyplan” shaped watch. Then came the famously and cryptically called “clock reference n. 1593″ by Patek Philippe which was a rectangular shaped watch.

From 1913 onwards more and more watches started to be developed in all shapes and styles. From the “gondola” watch of Patek Phillipe to Louis Cartiers’ “Tank”; named thus because it was inspired by the shape of English armored cars of the time. These are watches which are very much sought after. There were other numerous watch makers like Audemars Piguet, Vacheron Constantin who along with Patek Philippe and Cartier came out with many other designs which added other features to the watches like lunar phases, month and day most of which are found in modern watches now.

Of course we could not mention wrist watches without mentioning the most famous of them all: the Rolex watch. In the 1920s Rolex debuted in the world of wrist watches with the elegant Rolex Prince and its revolutionary “dual time” feature made famous for having the “seconds sector” larger than that of the minutes. At the same time Jaeger Le Coultre produced an even more advanced piece called the “Reverse”, also very revolutionary in that it could be turn 180 degrees within its case, thus protecting the crystal and dial. It became incredibly popular and was only prevented from achieving even greater success by the recession of the 1930s and the advent of world war 2.

These early watches of the 1910s to 1930s are what define all the makes of watches that we see and wear today. This short article has only scratched the surface of what is a very vast subject which has many more watch makers with diverse and revolutionary designs. However it is makers like Rolex, Cartier, Jaeger Le Coultre and the others mentioned that are amongst the most valuable and collectible, and should you ever be so lucky to get one then make sure you hang on to it – preferably to your wrist.



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The Art of Measuring Time

The history of the watch begins with the history of time. The history of time is covered in the study of horology: the art or science of measuring time or of making timepieces. An expert in horology is called a horologist and the fear of time or deadlines is horophobia. Okay, that one isn’t real, but it seems plausible.

Wherever they find evidence of societies, no matter how primitive, they find evidence of how members of those civilizations kept track of time; some used sticks with notches others used huge stones set by the movement of the stars. For ancient and prehistoric civilizations it wasn’t necessary to know the hours and minutes, but days and seasons were important, or so it seems by the evidence left behind.

As time progressed, so did the need for more exact measurement of that time. The first clocks didn’t have dials or hands; they chimed on a regular basis to signify it was time for church services or meals. As a matter of fact, the name “clock” is derived from the Middle Dutch word for bell, “klocke.” Of course, there were the silent timekeepers such as sundials and hourglasses. Water clocks were used in ancient Egypt and then in Greece. At least one type of water clock was being utilized as late as the 20th century.

The one thing in common with all clocks is that they all need motion. This does not include the earliest methods of keeping time: Stonehenge is not a clock. Early clocks used a mechanism called a verge and foliot beam, mechanisms which were much too heavy and large to make portable. At or around 1300 the clocks had no faces or hands or even a dial, but were set to chime at selected intervals. Around 1455-1488 spring-driven clocks are though to have been invented. The earliest surviving model is dated 1525.

Around 1500, then, is when clocks could be made small enough to be portable. A dumb bell shaped arm that was set on a center pivot or a spoked balance wheel replaced the foliot. Although no one can pinpoint the precise date the watch was invented, most horologists think the first one was crafted by Peter Henlein of Nuremburg. Dates vary, but somewhere in the early 1500’s, perhaps as early as 1510, but probably closer to the later date of 1524. Henlein is credited with the development of spring-powered clocks. Although inaccurate, they were much lighter than mechanical clocks built prior to their invention and the convenience of portability outweighed the importance of accuracy. The earliest existing model has the date “1548” with the initials of the artist who created it: Casper Werner, also of Nuremburg. It had Roman numerals and Arabic numerals on the dial and only an hour hand. The inaccuracies of the spring mechanism rendered a minute hand useless.

Many of the early watches were “neck watches” as opposed to wristwatches, they were expensive and showy and the owners wore them as fashion accessories. A portrait of Henry the Eighth shows him wearing a watch on a chain. Elizabeth the First is said to have worn a ring watch that had a metal sliver that would scratch her as an alarm device. Watch making as a profession sprang from the roots of jewelry making, with its members starting out as apprentices to masters in the guild.

Wristwatches came later. Historians seem to think they were invented as fashion accessories, too, jeweled and yet functional bracelets for the upper class. An existing example of this is a wristwatch once owned by Napoleon’s Josephine; it was created in 1806 by a Parisian jeweler and was encrusted with emeralds and pearls. It was almost a hundred years later that wristwatches became popular, and even then it was still women who were wearing them.

It was the military that brought wristwatches to the forefront for men. Pocket watches were much more popular until the late 1800’s, early 1900’s. Pocket watches were an affectation of the upper and middle classes; working class men wore the plainer, unadorned wristwatch. It was also in 1880 that the German forces ordered wristwatches for their artillery officers. The convenience of the wrist model over the pocket watch made it the timepiece of choice for most of the military during World War I. As military maneuvers became more refined and depended on accuracy and coordinated timing, watches became more vital to the war effort.

Aviators were great proponents of the wristwatch. Santos-Dumont, an aviator, was a friend of the watchmaker Louis Cartier and he collaborated with his friend to invent a perfect watch for flying. Cartier created the “Santos” watch in 1904, and it is thought to be the first man’s wristwatch. In 1950 Rolex and Pan Am Airlines got together and created the “Pilot’s Watch.” It showed the time in three different time zones: the time as set on the standard hands, Greenwich Mean Time and one other time zone. This was accomplished by the addition of a hand that rotated every 24 hours and a rotating bezel.

All analog watches have three main components. The first is the movement, a mechanism that measures and displays the current time. They may be mechanical or electronic or a hybrid. One example of an electromechanical movement is the tuning-fork movement. It results in a watch that hums rather than ticks. The second hand on these type watches have a continuous flowing motion rather than the stop-start motion of other movements.

The second component is the dial and hands. These are the parts that display the time. These parts range from the purely functional simple black face, clear white numbers of the watch called the A-11, number one choice of US Airmen in WWII, to the highly adorned enameled faces of the watches worn by the upper class ladies in the past. In between, we find a variety that ranges from the museum piece Movado face to multiple dials of diving watches and complicated chronometers.

Finally, there is the case. This is comprised of a middle, bezel, glass and back and is primarily for protecting the movement and the dial and hands. Along with the face, the case is what gives a watch its “look.”

Digital watches were introduced in 1970. The Hamilton Watch Company and a company called Electro-data introduced the “Pulsar” which had a red LED display, was 18-carat gold and sold for the sum of $2,100! In 1973 Seiko introduced a 6-digit LCD display, which allowed for a display that was always visible as opposed to having to push a button to see the time, an inconvenience of the LED display. Digital watches were really a novelty, an expensive one, at that, until 1975, when Texas Instruments started mass production of a twenty-dollar model, eventually sending Pulsar back to building analogue quartz versions. In the 1980’s digital watch technology soared and saw the advent of calculator watches, television displays and thermometers. High tech innovations since then include versions that can download data to computers, call your home phone and take your voice commands. Not ever fully realized are the Dick Tracy communication models, but if cell phones shrink down to strappable sizes, well, you never know.

Keeping track of time is as normal a part of daily life as eating or drinking. And even as younger generations look to their cellphones or PDA’s to check the time, their parents and grandparents still give them watches and clocks on momentous occasions such as graduations, birthdays and weddings. Watches are going back to their roots as a symbol of status as opposed to that of purely functional timepieces.

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Body Glove, a company from in Redondo Beach, Clifornia, founded in 1953 and specialized in wetsuits, swimwear, clothing, footwear, accessories, and technology accessories, continues to expand its product lines with an exciting new range of wristwatches, a line of functional and performance inspired watches for men and women. Body Glove has joined forces with Time Concepts, LLC, a new company established by the founder and CEO of Luminox watches.

Time Concepts was established as a “watch platform” onto which new watch brands will be placed, the first among them being the new Body Glove watch collection. With more than 25 years in the chronometric products business, Barry Cohen, founder of Luminox watches, established Time Concepts in 2006 to serve as a separate entity from Luminox for the development of branded watch programs and private label opportunities within the world of timepieces. Design development is under way on 24 more styles within the Body Glove brand, to be released later in 2007, as well as two other brands of watches to be released in the future, in addition to ongoing work on private label OEM watch programs for other companies.

The Body Glove watches are very popular among the aquatic sports fans. They are not only very appealing, but they are also a perfect choice for the active lifestyle of the Body Glove customers. They have all the functions of a regular dive watch and yet they are far more elegant. As a throw back to the era when the company was founded, the watch line includes a heritage retro collection with chronographs that have oversized crowns and pushers, braided leather straps and antique dials.

All of these timepieces possess the singular Body Glove fashion, while maintaining the brand’s unmistakable pursuit for performance. In keeping with Body Glove’s root product�- the wetsuit, all watches were made for humid environments, and just as functions for wetsuits are various, so too is the watch line. These beautiful watches come in a variety of colors and with an assortment of different materials including waterproof leather, nylon, polyurethane and stainless steel. The new Body Glove watches are a great choice whether you are on land or in the water, whether you are on a surfboard or in a luxury car.



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