How do you define time? In a long ago column written by the late Jack Smith of the Los Angeles Times, he asked that question. I was so taken with the various answers that  I cut it out and have kept it all these years in a book I own titled Time and the Art of Living, itself a paean to time.

Time, Smith notes in his essay, “might be defined as the medium in which life takes place.” It’s an arguable definition, but one well suited for the Dueber-Hampden and Timex bookmarks around which this column is built, since human consciousness and regulation of time bends what is otherwise a free medium into a cultural one. When time is defined within boundaries, it becomes something more rigid, a foundation for societal growth, a classification of human activity and its rewards, and a societally-imposed sense of  worth based on how we use it.

Night and day were undoubtedly the earliest concept of time-reckoning and time-measurement. Days were for hunting and gathering, nights for eating and resting. As families formed themselves into tribal societies, the need for planning and organization grew. The moon, with its regular pattern of shape changes in the same order and the same number of days apart probably began to serve as a timepiece not for measuring the passage of time but for fixing future dates for meetings of life-minded neighbors or attacks upon enemy tribes.

The first permanent timepiece was the sun dial. Like every invention, it underwent numerous revisions. Initially, it was probably a simple stick or stone whose lengthening and shortening shadow throughout the day was noted. But using this to measure a specific time was inaccurate since the same hour would be different in summer than in winter. Along came Berosus, a Chaldean historian and priest who lived around 250 B. C. He solved this difficulty by hollowing out the dial like the inside of a bowl. Inside it the shadow was cast by a small round ball or bead at the end of a pointer that stood horizontally out over the bowl. Lines in the bowl ensured that hours could be correctly measured. This “Hemicycle of Berosus” remained in use for centuries despite the difficulty of reading it because of its size. (A shadow that moved only a few inches a day would not be easy to watch for movement.)

Considerably larger were the Egyptian obelisks such as Cleopatra’s Needle. These sun dials had the advantage of being easily read—the shadows would move rapidly enough—but their flat surfaces meant the motion was irregular.

The final improvement was made when it was discovered that by slanting the pointer (or gnomon) toward the north pole that the sun’s shadow could be cast upon a flat surface with accurate results. The sundial was accurate but dependent on a stationary position. Sundials could not be moved without loss of accuracy since different markings were needed for different latitudes. And on a ship, a sundial would be dramatically affected by the motion of the waves.

An improved way of measuring time was by use of a vessel of water called a clepsydra (meaning “thief of water”). Its advantage over the sun dial was that it worked despite cloudy or stormy weather. Unlike the sundial, though, the clepsydra did not show the time. Rather it showed how many hours had elapsed since it had last been filled. It was a timekeeping piece only in a flexible sense of the word.

Gravitation rather than the sun ran this timepiece. But since it had a small hole in its bottom so that the liquid dripped out drop by drop it was soon found that the water in a filled clepsydra ran faster than in an empty one. Thus the idea of a double vessel containing a float to equalize the pressure was developed, solving that problem. Though they  had an unfortunate tendency to freeze on cold nights clepsydras worked well enough to have been used until as late as the end of the fifteenth century.

Related to but not a successor to the clepsydra was the hourglass, which held fine sand that poured from one chamber into another at a uniform rate of speed through a tiny hole. It had even more advantages: it would not freeze, did not need refilling, would run at a steady rate, could be made inexpensively and did not have parts that wore out. The smaller ones could even be carried about as a sort of personal timepiece, but it was an unsatisfactory solution.

The main problem in portable timekeeping was the driving power. Typically, the timepieces of the day were driven by weights, and therefore were impractical to transport on one’s person until Peter Henlein, probably a locksmith with expertise in metal, solved the problem of how to create the drive for a clock that need not depend on weights for its power. He is often credited with coming up with a coiled mainspring wound up with a ratchet. “Every day,” wrote Johannes Coeuleus, in 1511, “produces more ingenious inventions. A clever and comparatively young man—Peter Henlein—creates works that are the admiration of leading mathematicians, for, out of a little iron he constructs clocks with numerous wheels, which, without any impulse and in any position, indicate time for forty hours and strike, and which can be carried in the purse as well as in the pocket.”

They were notoriously inaccurate, having only an hour hand that had to be wound twice a day. Though attempts were made to increase the accuracy, these were relatively unsuccessful so watchmakers concentrated on their use as jewelry. Cases were made of gilt or precious metal, and often engraved, jeweled or enameled. When watch design changed from a cylinder to circular, manufacturers began to supply a protective outer case designed to be worn with the watch; it was known as a pair-case watch.

It wasn’t until around 1675 that a spiral balance spring was used. This particular technical advancement enabled a watch to display fractions of a minute rather than fractions of an hour. Like its predecessors, it wasn’t without problems. Temperature affected the accuracy because of the elasticity of the mainspring as did as the position of the watch (when carried).

Two other important factors occurred at this time: a minute hand and a dial subdivided into minutes was added, and King Charles II of England introduced the fashion of long waistcoats; watches went from being worn around the neck to being carried in pockets. 

Four countries—England, France, Switzerland, and the United States—were primarily involved in the development of watches. The English involvement goes back 1627 when the wonderfully-named Worshipful Clockmakers Company, a guild of watchmakers, incorporated. It operated partly as a labor union and partly as a manufacturing trust, which looked after its members’ business through laws and regulations.   

Under a charter issued by Charles I, the company had the power to make rules for the government, an astonishing grant of powers. It promptly passed rules forbidding all persons from “making, buying, selling, transporting, and importing any bad, deceitful clocks, watches, larums, sun-dials or cases for the said trade” and possessed the power to search, confiscate and destroy inferior goods. It also regulated its members’ growth by forbidding any one master to employ more than two apprentices without express permission of the guild.

One of its most famous members was Thomas Tompion, known as the “father of English watchmaking” for his improvements. Daniel Quare, another member, was the first to devise the mechanism for driving the two hands of the watch face. Interestingly, Quare, a Quaker, could not take an oath of any kind and was a “conscientious objector” to warfare. Because of this he was, at the same time, honored by royalty for his watchmaking work and prosecuted for his refusal to pay taxes for the support of the army.

Watches were handmade, carefully crafted items. A single handmade watch might takes weeks or months, each one made separately without regard to labor or expense. Naturally, the watches were expensive and limited in their distribution. But English watchmakers liked it that way. Other countries, however, took note and began to use more expedient methods—machinery, lesser-paid women operatives. To the ultimate English detriment, they fought these changes.

While France could not make better watches, but they did make them prettier, turning them into  miniature works of art. Many of these watches were in the form of painted, engraved and enameled musical instruments, flowers and jeweled butterflies.

And then, during this time, the most important development in the history of watches took place. In eastern France, a watchmaker named Charles Cusin decided, one day in 1574, to move further east, across the border into Geneva, Switzerland, and became a founding member of a watchmaker’s guild there.

The guild was serious about their craft and particular in how it was regulated. Article V of their regulations stated that “they shall be required to visit each journeyman at least four times during the year, having power to seize all articles which do not conform to the specifications now in force, to report all delinquents to the worthy governing board, and to punish the offenders in accordance with the gravity of their fault.” Quality was obviously the primary goal and remains so to this day. They also restricted the number of workmen who could be admitted to the guild, drafted special ordinances forbidding other watchmakers from establishing themselves within a certain distance of the city,  and fought for laws forbidding anyone from bringing into the city a finished watch constructed within a certain distance of city boundaries. Their efforts were successful. By 1799, the city contained nearly six thousand watchmakers and jewelers and was producing fifty thousand timepieces a year.

But they couldn’t stop everyone. Over in La Sagne (in the Neuchatel region of Switzerland), fifteen-year-old Daniel Jean Richard determined to build his own watch. He succeeded but wasn’t entirely satisfied. Someone told him about a machine in Geneva that made the cutting wheels, but the watchmen of the city refused to share their knowledge or machines. So he returned to his town, produced a machine and soon became not only a watch manufacturer but mentor to a number of the young men of his district. Watchmaking soon began to flourish in his town and in those nearby.

Without a guild to stifle production, La Sagne soon overtook Geneva in output. By 1818, it was turning out watches at the rate of 130,000 per year. The English, who viewed the new technical developments with suspicion, began to fall behind. The French had never been serious competitors (English production tapered off until it effectively ended in 1930), and American watch manufacturing was still in its infancy. But it didn’t take Americans long to catch up with the recognition of the need for two types:  a high-grade watch of reasonable cost and a cheap watch that would work accurately under rough conditions.

The world was growing steadily away from the theory of special privilege, and the requirements of the average man were becoming more insistent With the development of the railroad, the telegraph, the modern factory, the newspaper and other improvements which speeded up human movement a means of measuring and performing those movements in an economical manner became necessary rather than extravagant. People were valuing minutes and even seconds so these additional hands were added.

Up to 1840, watches were all hand-finished so the parts were not interchangeable. Starting around 1850, the Americans pioneered the use of automated machines to mass produce high-quality watches with interchangeable parts. By the 1860s-1870s American watch companies (Waltham, 1850-1950; Elgin, 1864-on; and Hamilton, 1892-on) had proved that this system could make watches that were every bit as good as all but the best watches that were made by hand. They were also able to make watches that were cheaper than all but the cheapest handmade watches.

By the mid 1870s, the Swiss noticed a significant drop off in sales to the American market. To find out why, they sent a representative to the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. Waltham’s automated screw-making machine that could produce a steady stream of perfectly formed screws beat out the hand-controlled machines the Swiss used.

Before the 1880s, the Swiss watch industry was made up of tiny individualized shops that made parts; this meant each watch had to be hand tweaked to account for any differences among the parts. After the Exposition, the Swiss reorganized into centralized factories. By around 1900, the Swiss technology had pretty much caught up with the Americans.

Of the American watch companies, only Elgin, Hamilton and the company was to become Timex successfully made the switch to wristwatches. According to its web site, Timex began its life as Waterbury Clock, which specialized in making affordable timekeeping devices—shelf and mantle clocks with cases that imitated expensive imported models but included mass produced movements—for working class Americans beginning in the mid-nineteenth century. In 1880, Waterbury Watch, a sister company, manufactured the first inexpensive pocket watch. It was an immediate success, and its almost unbelievably long (nine foot!) mainspring was assembled by a predominately female workforce whose dexterous fingers were prized probably as much as their willingness to work for low wages.

Around the turn of the twentieth century, Timex began to work with successful mass marketer Robert H. Ingersoll on a “Yankee” pocket watch that cost only one dollar. Twenty years later, nearly 40 million had been sold; little wonder that it was known as “the watch that made the dollar famous.” But pocket watches were on their way out. The trench fighting that characterized World War I did not allow for the luxury of pocket watches that required one to pull a watch out to check the time. The Army pressured Waterbury to re-invent the watch as a “wristwatch” for the soldiers who ended up liking the version so much that they continued to use it after the war. Civilians soon caught their enthusiasm for the convenience.

I can’t be sure when this bookmark was produced. The motor car on the front appears to be a 1940s design, but the motto, “Takes a licking and keeps on ticking” is from the 1950s. It was during World War II, when the company, newly renamed the U.S. Time Company, had turned its factories over to wartime production of artillery and anti-aircraft fuses. And its traditional reputation for reliability in clocks now served to help by producing the highest quality war weaponry of any Allied source.

Using its wartime research and development knowledge, the company developed the world’s first inexpensive yet completely reliable mechanical watch movement—the Timex. Anyone who has grown up in the 1950s and 1960s surely remembers the advertisements in print and on television where “torture tests” were routinely given to Timex watches that would, invariably, “takes a licking and keeps on ticking.” Some of those included having the watch strapped to baseball great Mickey Mantle’s bat, frozen in an ice cube tray, spun for seven days in a vacuum cleaner, taped to a giant lobster’s claw, or wrapped around a turtle in a tank. I can still recall (vaguely) the voice of newsman John Cameron Swayze watching the tests and then removing the watch from the propeller of an outboard motor or from the fist of a diver who had leapt eighty-seven feet into the water from the Acapulco cliff to show it still working. I wasn’t the only one entranced. By the end of the 1950s, one out of every three watches sold in the U.S. was a Timex, and thousands of viewers wrote in with suggestions for other “torture tests.”

The next decade brought the first women’s brand, the Cavatina, and the first watch promoted as inexpensive enough to own several to go with various outfits.  Not surprisingly, given these marketing successes, the 1970s saw the brand retailed in more than 250,000 different outlets around the U.S.  No question about it, Timex was a survivor. It survived the new competition from Japan, and it captivated the emerging athletic trend by issuing, in digital form, the Ironman Triathlon®, a bestselling sports watch. Timex has managed to maintain its hold on the marketplace by staying on top and often in front of technological innovations while holding onto its reputation for quality at reasonable prices. And the support of a Timex Multisport Team (comprised of 45 professional and amateur athletes around the world), via the TeamTimex blog keeps the name in front of all who love sports. For those who prefer an indoor version, Timexpo is a fascinating museum.