HORN SECTION

How the wristwatch would never have become the convenient and preferred means of wearing a timepiece, without the advent and simplicity of lugs or horns

- PETER LORRE

For the better part of the nearly three and a half millennia that humankind has measured and recorded time, clocks and other instruments have mostly been large objects, occupying pillars and towers within major town centers. The miniaturization of timepieces into a more pocketable form, i.e. the pocket watch, is a relatively recent occurrence in this regard and the wristwatch later still. In fact, the first recorded pocket watch is attributed to German watchmaker, Peter Henlein in the late 1400s and the first timepiece worn on the arm seems to be one that was made for Queen Elisabeth I in 1571 as a gift from the first Earl of Leicester, Robert Dudley. Now it is important to reiterate the “worn on the arm” aspect once more, because Queen Elisabeth I’s 1571 piece is described to have been a clock full of diamonds suspended by a bracelet that could be worn on the arm, not quite the wrist.

It would appear that within the 1500s right up into the early1900s, watches being worn on some sort of a bracelet and, therein some part of your arm, was already a thing. It was considered appropriate only for women, and these timepieces were, for the most part, ornate and effeminate, and not necessarily worn because time was of the essence. Amongst contemporary watchmaking firms, Breguet makes amongst the first claims to a landmark moment. Acting on a commission from the Queen of Naples herself in 1810, Abraham-Louis Breguet made a timepiece intentionally made to be worn on the wrist. There are no sketches or impressions as to what this timepiece would have looked like, but the Reine de Naples wristwatch is the contemporary interpretation. Patek Philippe makes the next claim to a wristwatch in 1868 with a rectangular clock mounted on a three-part bracelet for the Hungarian countess, Kosewitz.