“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. Even so, 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. The he or she who uses time wisely wins. Unfortunately, many have no idea of time: they are always late, bothering people out of punctuality, at best. It is interesting that those with no conception or appreciation of time seem to get surplus 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, whine, moan, moan!)
Where we come from
The celestial bodies, the stars, the sun and the moon, served as our first clocks, and they predate the sundial, the first great advance in timekeeping, by eons. The primary function of the watch is still to keep track of time. Modern watches originated as functional, wearable, mechanical watches. Watches from the 19th century were often carried in the pocket and included a protective cover, similar to the cover of a women’s compact. Often they were attached to clothing by a chain. Wristwatches entered the market in the late 19th century as a women’s fashion accessory, 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 required no winding. The first digital watch appeared in the 1970s, but digital watches have yet to replace analog watches, due in part to a hugely 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. Design is stupid! The samples flew off the shelves and remain true to their original concept: analogue, 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 at creating a computer watch, but to date, only one has hit the 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 tell time, that precious, finite commodity around which our daily lives revolve.
