They were made as jewelry and novelties for the nobility, valued for their fine ornamentation, unusual shape, or intriguing mechanism, and accurate timekeeping was of very minor importance. The accuracy of their verge and foliot movements was so poor, with errors of perhaps several hours per day, that they were practically useless. These early clock-watches were not worn to tell the time. Still later in the century there was a trend for unusually-shaped watches, and clock-watches shaped like books, animals, fruit, stars, flowers, insects, crosses, and even skulls (Death's head watches) were made. The shape later evolved into a rounded form these were later called Nuremberg eggs. They usually had to be wound twice a day. Many of the movements included striking or alarm mechanisms. The movement was made of iron or steel and held together with tapered pins and wedges, until screws began to be used after 1550. The face was not covered with glass, but usually had a hinged brass cover, often decoratively pierced with grillwork so the time could be read without opening. They were heavy drum-shaped cylindrical brass boxes several inches in diameter, engraved and ornamented. These 'clock-watches' were fastened to clothing or worn on a chain around the neck. However, other German clockmakers were creating miniature timepieces during this period, and there is no evidence Henlein was the first. He shapes many-wheeled clocks out of small bits of iron, which run and chime the hours without weights for forty hours, whether carried at the breast or in a handbag ![]() Peter Hele, still a young man, fashions works which even the most learned mathematicians admire. His fame is based on a passage by Johann Cochläus in 1511, He was one of the first German craftsmen who made "clock-watches", ornamental timepieces worn as pendants, which were the first timepieces to be worn on the body. Nuremberg clockmaker Peter Henlein (or Henle or Hele) (1485-1542) is often credited as the inventor of the watch. Portable timepieces were made possible by the invention of the mainspring in the early 15th century. The first timepieces to be worn, made in the 16th century beginning in the German cities of Nuremberg and Augsburg, were transitional in size between clocks and watches. Clock-watch Ī pomander watch from 1530 once belonged to Philip Melanchthon and is now in the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. The Oxford English Dictionary records the word watch in association with a timepiece from at least as early as 1542. Another theory surmises that the term came from 17th-century sailors, who used the new mechanisms to time the length of their shipboard watches (duty shifts). One account of the origin of the word "watch" suggests that it came from the Old English word woecce which meant "watchman", because town watchmen used watches to keep track of their shifts. Although mechanical watches still sell in the watch market, the vast majority of watches as of 2020 have quartz movements. During the 1980s quartz watches took over the market from mechanical watches, a process referred to as the " quartz crisis". In the 1960s the invention of the quartz watch which ran on electricity and kept time with a vibrating quartz crystal, proved a radical departure for the watchmaking industry. ![]() The watch was developed by inventors and engineers from the 16th century to the mid-20th century as a mechanical device, powered by winding a mainspring which turned gears and then moved the hands it kept time with a rotating balance wheel. ![]() The history of watches began in 16th-century Europe, where watches evolved from portable spring-driven clocks, which first appeared in the 15th century. The 24-hour dial has Roman numerals on the outer band and Hindu-Arabic numerals on the inner one. A 16th-century portable drum watch with sundial.
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