![]() ![]() ![]() “They were portable and made of precious metals. Often elaborately decorated and made out of expensive materials, they were still as much a fashion accessory as a reflection of their owner’s access to the latest technology.īut besides their obvious function as a status symbol, “watches often became like a bank account,” says Alexis McCrossen, author of Marking Modern Times: A History of Clocks, Watches, and Other Timekeepers in American Life, and a popular source on the topic of wearable time. Flattened so that they could more easily slip into clothing, watch faces began to be covered in glass in part to protect their fragile inner mechanisms from catching on fabric. In the 17th century, the introduction of waistcoats popularized the pocket as the new place to wear and display watches, changing the shape of timepieces into the pocket watches we think of today. Made portable thanks to the invention of the mainspring, they needed to be regularly wound, and watches that kept count of minutes were extremely rare, with many instead tracking things like the month or phase of the moon.ġ7th century Nuremberg Egg Watch. Despite the debated origin of the watch, there’s consensus that they often served more as decoration than as accurate timekeepers, and were worn around the neck, fastened to clothing, or embedded into jewelry. Though many sources cite German clockmaker Peter Henlein’s “Nuremberg eggs” of the early 16th century, which were worn on a chain around the neck, as the first wearable timepieces, it’s believed that that the original examples actually appeared in Italy in the late 15th century. Like the Apple Watches of today, early wearable tech had multiple functions, and keeping time wasn’t always the top priority. You can also see what we’re up to by signing up here. The archives will remain available here for new stories, head over to Vox.com, where our staff is covering consumer culture for The Goods by Vox. Thank you to everyone who read our work over the years. ![]()
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