Wrist Watches
I've had a lot of messages from people who enjoy the site and wondered whether there might be room for some coverage of wristwatch brands alongside all the pocket watch content. Well, don't say I never listen. This section covers the brands I think are worth knowing about — each one has a proper history page with the full story, key models and, where relevant, a note on what they made before wristwatches took over from pocket watches entirely.
There is more crossover between pocket watches and wristwatches than people often realise. Several of the great pocket watch makers — Longines, Omega, IWC — transitioned directly into wristwatch production and brought the same movement engineering with them. Others, like Rolex and Breitling, were founded specifically as wristwatch companies at precisely the moment pocket watches were losing their dominance. Understanding where the wristwatch came from makes it considerably more interesting as an object — which is more or less how this site approaches everything.
Watches Worth Knowing About
Breitling
Est. 1884, St. ImierBreitling was established in 1884 by Léon Breitling in St. Imier — the same Swiss Jura valley town that produced Longines. The workshop began by making precision chronographs and scientific timing instruments, and that specialisation never really left. By 1915 his son Gaston had produced the world's first wristwatch chronograph, and the company has been the watchmaker most closely associated with aviation ever since.
The Navitimer of 1952 — a chronograph with an integrated circular slide rule for airspeed and navigation calculations — became the standard watch of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association and remains in production today. A Breitling also went into space on Scott Carpenter's wrist in 1962.
Rolex
Est. 1905, LondonRolex was founded in London in 1905 by Hans Wilsdorf — a Bavarian entrepreneur who saw the wristwatch market before most manufacturers took it seriously. The company's two great technical contributions are the Oyster case of 1926 (the first genuinely waterproof wristwatch) and the Perpetual rotor of 1931 (the first practical self-winding mechanism). Together they defined the modern automatic wristwatch.
The marketing genius that accompanied the engineering is equally worth noting. Arranging for a swimmer to cross the English Channel wearing a Rolex, then running the full-page advertisement in the Daily Mail the following morning, is one of the most effective product launches in watchmaking history.
Omega
Est. 1848, La Chaux-de-FondsThe name "Omega" came from a movement created in 1894 — a simple, reliable watch that impressed the company's banker enough for him to suggest the name should stick. It did. Omega spent the next 120 years making it mean something, from official timekeeper at the British Royal Flying Corps in 1917 to NASA's choice for the Apollo programme in 1965.
When Neil Armstrong walked on the moon in 1969, an Omega Speedmaster Professional was on Buzz Aldrin's wrist. The Speedmaster has been in continuous production since 1957, making it one of the longest-running watch references ever made.
IWC
Est. 1868, SchaffhausenThe International Watch Company has one of the stranger founding stories in Swiss horology — it was set up not by a Swiss craftsman but by an American engineer, Florentine Ariosto Jones, who had worked for E. Howard in Boston and believed Swiss labour could produce American-quality movements at lower cost. He chose Schaffhausen because the Rhine waterfall there provided cheap hydroelectric power for his machinery.
Jones's commercial venture failed, but the technical standards he established survived. IWC's later history includes the Mark XI pilot's watch for the Royal Air Force, the Portugieser (a pocket watch movement in an unusually large wristwatch case), and the Ingenieur — the first automatic watch with a soft-iron anti-magnetic inner case.
Cartier
Est. 1847, ParisThere's a reasonable argument that Cartier invented the modern wristwatch — or at least the idea that a wristwatch could be something worth wanting rather than merely something useful. In 1904, Louis Cartier designed a watch for his friend Alberto Santos-Dumont, the aviation pioneer who found it impossible to check his pocket watch while at the controls. The result was a square-cased wristwatch with exposed screws on the bezel: honest, functional, and immediately elegant.
The Tank of 1917 — named for the Renault FT tanks Cartier had seen on the Western Front — has been in continuous production since and remains one of the most imitated watch designs in history. It has been on the wrists of Jacqueline Kennedy, Andy Warhol and Princess Diana, among others.
Oris
Est. 1904, HolsteinOris gets its name from a brook and valley close to Holstein in the Swiss canton of Basel-Landschaft — the name derives from the Celtic-Roman word orusz, meaning watercourse. The company has been making watches there since 1904 and remains one of the very few Swiss watch brands of any significance that is still privately and independently owned, answering to no conglomerate.
In 1981, facing the full force of the quartz crisis, the board made a decision that was either courageous or reckless depending on how you viewed it: discontinue all quartz production entirely and make only mechanical watches. It was a bet on the future of mechanical horology at a moment when that future looked genuinely uncertain. The bet paid off.
Other Watch Articles
- Settings of a Calendar Watch Winding Crown How the winding crown on a calendar watch controls date, day and time-setting functions — a surprisingly involved mechanism.
- Watch Winders — Do I Really Need One? Automatic watches wind themselves on the wrist, but what happens when you're not wearing them? An honest look at whether a winder is worth the money.
- A look at the options across different price points — from basic single-watch rotors to multi-watch cabinet winders.
- Solar Powered Watches Citizen may have a reputation for mass-produced watches, but their Eco-Drive solar technology — launched in the 1990s — is genuinely impressive engineering. A closer look at how it works.
- Repeater Wristwatches The minute repeater — a complication that strikes the hours and minutes on demand — is one of the most technically demanding in all watchmaking. Here it is in wristwatch form.
From Pocket Watch to Wristwatch
It's worth noting that the transition from pocket watch to wristwatch didn't happen overnight, and it didn't happen cleanly. The wristwatch was considered an eccentric affectation by many serious watch buyers well into the 1910s — something worn by women as a bracelet, not a practical instrument for a working man. What changed the equation was the First World War. Soldiers in the trenches needed both hands free and found the pocket watch impossible to use in combat conditions. The wristwatch went from curiosity to standard military equipment in the space of four years, and it never looked back.
Several of the pocket watch companies covered on this site — Longines, Omega, Hamilton — made the transition successfully and are still producing watches today. Others, like Waltham, Elgin and Hampden, did not adapt quickly enough and eventually closed. The story of how and why some companies survived the wristwatch era and others didn't is one of the more instructive episodes in American manufacturing history.
If pocket watches are your main interest, the pages in this section are useful context for understanding where the watches you collect fit in the broader history of timekeeping. If you've arrived here primarily for the wristwatch content, the main site has extensive coverage of American and European pocket watch makers that's well worth exploring — the movements inside many of the early wristwatches listed here have direct ancestors in the pocket watch world.