The history of the watch is very fascinating. It shows how successive generations of watch makers worked to produce watches that showed not only time but also became fashion accessories. Modern watches offer state-of-the-art technology and features that are far ahead of those found in earlier models but they don’t have the romance of the earlier watches.

The first device used for keeping time was a pocket watch that was worn around the neck or kept in the waistcoat pocket. It was especially popular among the railroad staff, and soon came to be possessed by most working professionals.

Initially, pocket watches were pieces of custom-made jewelry that were owned exclusively by the royalty or the very wealthy. They were embedded with jewels and crafted from the most expensive materials.

Early watches lost time as the day progressed. This made it difficult to synchronize time among a group of people and it was felt that watches needed to be designed to be more accurate. Improvements in technology made watches smaller, until they were worn around the wrist.

The invention of the wrist watch was a death blow to pocket watches. People found it much easier to strap a wrist watch than to maintain pocket watches. Gradually, pocket watches lost out completely to wrist watches.

The production of watches increased dramatically during times of war. A popular watch during the war was the Aviation Watch, also known as the Pilot Watch. It was used primarily by the aircrew and the military and helped to maintain flight plans, navigate flights, perform pre-flight planning, etc. Today, advances in instrumentation technology have reduced the importance of this watch, though it may still be useful as a backup.

LED digital watches, without any moving parts, became popular in the late 1960s and the early 1970s. The Americans and the Japanese were the pioneers in the development of these watches.

Today there are many different watch makers who are trying to woo customers. You have a wide range of styles, models and prices to choose from. These watches use a wide range of power sources thought the most popular is battery power. The accuracy of the watches too has become phenomenal. Most luxury watches are accurate to the millionths of a second.

Though watches are produced across the world, the finest ones are still made in Switzerland, which has become the unofficial capital of the watch industry.