For millennia civilizations have kept time to varying degrees of accuracy and for varying degrees of necessity. As far back as 2000 years before the Common Era time has been kept by means of sun measurements and continuous flow measurements in the form of sundials, water clocks, hourglasses, etc. More recently, from after roughly the 15th century, time was kept in more accurate measurement with the introduction of oscillating mechanisms. However, it is only very recently in history that time-keeping instruments have been incorporated into the accessorized wardrobe of the average person.

The history of fashion and costume is presumably as long as the history of human development though we cannot study it as far back as we may like, but the history of the timepiece as a wearable accessory is comparatively short. References to the use of pocket watches can be dated to the 15th century and the wristwatch only to the early 1900’s. The pocket watch would be linked to clothing or worn around the neck with a chain and would typically have had a metal cover to protect the watch face. The desire to keep time, beyond being a novelty to the individual, had a broader social function as Western societies entered the industrial age of factory work and railroad transportation. With the era of manufacturing and train schedules, keeping time became pertinent to laborers as much as to railroad workers and the fashionable, moneyed set.

By World War I the wrist watch was standard supply to Allied forces and answered the need for accurate and accessible time devices during war maneuvers. While the wrist watch had been strictly a feminine accessory preceding the Great War, after the war, as soldiers returned from battle with their keepsake trench wrist watches, it became a legitimate piece of the civilian man’s accoutrements. Since then it has become a fairly typical part of the average person’s costume and the notion of having a time keeping device adorning one’s body has been mediated by variations in wrist watch style and aesthetic detailing.

image: bronze water clock, from Han dynasty, roughly 3rd century C.E. image: painting, ‘The Fortune Teller’, c.1630s Georges de La Tour (Metropolitan Museum of Art) image: circa World War I trench wrist watch

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