“Time is an equal opportunity employer. Every human being has exactly the same number of hours and minutes every day. Rich people can’t buy more hours. Scientists can’t invent new minutes. And you can’t save time.” to spend it.” on another day Still, time is incredibly fair and forgiving. No matter how much time you have wasted in the past, you still have a full tomorrow.”
~Denis Waitley
If time were nothing more than an incidental commodity, it is doubtful that the following phrases would clutter our everyday speech:
A stitch in time…
Lost time…
time found…
Time is money.
Compress time…
Time stopped.
Time of my life…
The Sands of Time…
Real time…
Killing time…
As time goes…
Dad time…
Time is on our side.
Time played against him.
Time is the greatest leveler in the universe. He or she who uses time wisely wins. Unfortunately, many have no idea of time: they are always late, bugging people out of punctuality at best. Interestingly, those with no conception or appreciation of time seem to get leftover goods over and over again. However, they never seem to make the connection. Some even refuse to wear a watch! (I don’t like jewelry, whimper, moan, moan!)
Where we come from
The heavenly bodies, the stars, the sun and the moon, served as our earliest clocks, predating the sundial, the first great advance in timekeeping, by eons. The main function of the watch is still to keep track of time. Modern watches originated as functional, wearable, mechanical watches. Nineteenth-century watches were often carried in a pocket and included a protective cover, similar to the cover on a women’s compact. They were often attached to clothing by a chain. Wristwatches entered the market in the late 19th century as a fashion accessory for women, and credit goes to Cartier for popularizing the leather strap wristwatch.
The first mechanical wristwatches required manual winding. During the 1950s, the Hamilton Watch Company introduced the first battery-powered watch, which did not require winding. The first digital watch appeared in the 1970s, but digital watches have yet to replace analog watches, due in part to a wildly successful marketing campaign by Swatch. Towards the end of the 20th century, a consortium of Swiss watchmakers and graphic designers from around the world resurrected the analog watch as a disposable fashion accessory and introduced their first wild designs in 1983. It’s the stupid design! Samples flew off the shelves and stay true to their original concept: analog, cheap, fun, bold, Swiss.
Along the way, watches evolved into solar power, kinetic (self-winding) power, lithium power, digital, light-emitting diode (LED), liquid crystal display (LDC), and Water. Today’s men’s watches routinely include a calendar, and many women’s watches also include a calendar. But why stop there? You can find a watch that suits all your needs. Today’s watches contain calculators, digital cameras, cell phones, and games. There have been several attempts to create a computer clock, but to date, only one has made it to market, Seiko’s Ruputer, and it didn’t last. At the time, it turned out to be unmarketable, but stay tuned…
Whether you want high-tech functionality or prefer to focus on the aesthetics of your watch, watches continue to keep time, that precious and finite commodity around which our daily lives revolve.
