The Rise of the Wristwatch

For centuries, watches were carried in the pocket, and wearing one on the wrist was considered a feminine affectation. The First World War changed everything, transforming the wristwatch from a lady's ornament into the essential instrument of the modern man.

Were wristwatches always for men?

Quite the opposite. When Abraham-Louis Breguet created what is regarded as the first known wristwatch in 1810 for Caroline Murat, the Queen of Naples, it was firmly an item of women's jewellery. Throughout the 19th century, a man of standing carried a pocket watch on a chain; a wristlet was seen as delicate and unmanly. This perception ran so deep that soldiers who improvised wrist-worn watches were sometimes mocked. The wristwatch had to overcome a genuine cultural stigma before it could become universal.

How did aviation and war intervene?

The shift began with practical necessity. In 1904, Cartier created the Santos for the aviator Alberto Santos-Dumont, who could not safely fumble for a pocket watch while flying. But it was the battlefield that truly changed minds.

• 1810 — Breguet builds the first known wristwatch for the Queen of Naples
• 1904 — Cartier's Santos gives an aviator hands-free timekeeping
• 1914-1918 — soldiers strap watches to their wrists to coordinate attacks

In the trenches, an officer needed both hands free and instant access to the time to synchronise artillery barrages and infantry advances. Fumbling in a pocket under fire could be fatal. Soldiers adapted pocket watches with soldered wire lugs and leather cups called "trench watches," and manufacturers rushed to supply purpose-built wrist models.

Why did the war make the wristwatch masculine?

The transformation was one of association. Before the war, the wristwatch was feminine; after it, the wristwatch was the mark of the soldier — brave, practical, modern. Returning servicemen kept wearing the watches that had served them in combat, and civilian men followed their example. Within a single generation the stigma had completely reversed. By the 1930s, wristwatch sales exceeded pocket-watch sales for the first time, and the pocket watch began its slow slide into obsolescence. Few cultural shifts in the history of objects have been so rapid or so complete.

Which innovations cemented the wristwatch's rise?

Once the wristwatch had won social acceptance, a wave of engineering breakthroughs made it genuinely superior to the pocket watch it replaced.

• 1926 — Rolex introduces the Oyster case, the first truly waterproof wristwatch, sealing the crown and caseback against water and dust
• 1931 — Rolex's Perpetual rotor delivers the first commercially successful self-winding mechanism, so the watch wound itself from wrist motion
• 1953 — the Rolex Submariner arrives as a purpose-built dive watch, extending the wristwatch into professional tool territory

The Oyster case solved the wristwatch's greatest vulnerability. Worn openly on the wrist, a watch was exposed to rain, sweat, and dust in a way a pocket watch tucked in a waistcoat never was. Rolex famously proved the Oyster's waterproofing when Mercedes Gleitze swam the English Channel wearing one in 1927, and the watch emerged in perfect working order.

What did this era leave behind?

The rise of the wristwatch established the template for everything that followed. The waterproof case, the automatic movement, and the purpose-built tool watch all emerged in these decades and remain the foundations of watchmaking today. Nearly every modern watch — dress, dive, pilot, or field — descends from designs perfected in this formative period.

That heritage is why identifying a watch reveals so much history: a photograph run through AI Watch Identifier can trace a modern piece back to the innovations of the 1920s and 1930s that made the wristwatch supreme. From a queen's jewelled curiosity to a soldier's vital instrument to the default way the entire world now tells time, the wristwatch's rise is one of the great stories of how a single object conquered a culture.