Pocket watch

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This article is about the portable timepiece. For the Dave Grohl album, see Pocketwatch (album).

A gold pocket watch with hunter case and watch chain

A pocket watch (or pocketwatch) usually is a strapless personal timepiece that is carried in a pocket. The display is traditionally analog. Pocket watches generally have a chain to be secured to a waistcoat, lapel, or belt loop (the chain or ornaments on it being known as fobs), as well as a hinged cover to protect the face of the watch. Such covers are not always present. Also common are fasteners designed to be put through a buttonhole and worn in a jacket or waistcoat, this sort being frequently associated with and named after train conductors.

An early reference to the pocket watch is in a letter in November 1462 from the Italian clockmaker Bartholomew Manfredi to the Marchese di Manta, where he offers him a 'pocket clock' better than that belonging to the Duke of Modena. By the end of the 15th Century, spring-driven clocks appeared in Italy, and in Germany, Peter Henlein (a master locksmith of Nuremberg) was regularly manufacturing pocket watches by 1510. Thereafter, pocket watch manufacture spread throughout the rest of Europe as the 16th Century progressed.

1 Overview
2 Early pocket watches
3 Use in railroading in the United States
4 Decline in popularity
5 Pocket watches in fiction
6 Historically famous pocket watch manufacturers

[edit] Overview

Hospital pocket watch, featuring instructions in Latin for measuring a patient's pulse.

Pocket watches are commonly regarded as being one of two types: the open faced; or so-called hunter cased (also called savonette from the French). The latter has a hinged front cover that protects the face and crystal of the watch.

Since the separate dial that marks the passage of seconds is traditionally placed closest to the six o'clock position, this means usually the stem (or pendant) of an open faced pocket watch is set at its twelve o'clock position. The hunter's stem is placed most commonly at the three o'clock position. When read, a the open faced is held with the stem straight up and a hunter is read by turning the watch 90° with the stem pointing to the right.

Modern manufacturers of pocket watches, especially those watches with a quartz movement, are not bound by tradition when regarding the orientation of movements and the cases they are inserted into (open-faced or hunter).

[edit] Early pocket watches

The watch was first created in the 16th century when the spring driven clock was invented. These watches were at first quite big and boxy and were worn around the neck. It was not for another century that it became common to wear a watch in a pocket.

[edit] Use in railroading in the United States

See main article: Railroad chronometers

The rise of railroading during the last half of the 19th century led to the widespread use of pocket watches. Because of the likelihood of train wrecks and other accidents if all railroad workers did not accurately know the current time, pocket watches became required equipment for all railroad workers.

The first steps toward codified standards for railroad-grade watches were taken in 1887 when the American Railway Association held a meeting to define basic standards for watches. However, it took a disaster to bring about widespread acceptance of stringent standards. A famous train wreck on the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway in Kipton, Ohio on April 19, 1891 occurred because one of the engineers' watches had stopped for 4 minutes. The railroad officials commissioned Webb C. Ball as their Chief Time Inspector, in order to establish precision standards and a reliable timepiece inspection system for Railroad chronometers. This led to the adoption in 1893 of stringent standards for pocket watches used in railroading. These railroad-grade pocket watches, as they became colloquially known, had to meet the General Railroad Timepiece Standards adopted in 1893 by almost all railroads. These standards read, in part:

"...open faced, size 16 or 18, have a minimum of 17 jewels, adjusted to at least five positions, keep time accurately to within 30 seconds a week, adjusted to temps of 34 to 100 °F. have a double roller, steel escape wheel, lever set, regulator, winding stem at 12 o'clock, and have bold black Arabic numerals on a white dial, with black hands."

Additional requirements were adopted in later years in response to additional needs; for example, the adoption of the diesel-electric locomotive led to new standards from the 1940s on specifying that timekeeping accuracy could not be affected by electromagnetic fields.

[edit] Decline in popularity

A pocket watch with an attached compass.

Pocket watches are not common in modern times, having been superseded by wristwatches. Up until about the turn of the 20th century, though, the pocket watch was predominant and the wristwatch was considered feminine and unmanly. In men's fashions, pocket watches began to be superseded by wristwatches around the time of World War I, when officers in the field began to appreciate that a watch worn on the wrist was more easily accessed than one kept in a pocket. However, pocket watches continued to be widely used in railroading even as their popularity declined elsewhere.

In the United States, a gift of a gold-cased pocket watch is traditionally awarded to an employee upon his or her retirement. In that capacity, a "gold watch" has become a cultural symbol alluding to retirement, obsolescence, and old age.

[edit] Pocket watches in fiction

A pocket watch, and a chain for it, play a crucial role in the classic O. Henry short story "The Gift of the Magi."

Frequently, pocket watches in fiction are used to indicate time ticking away, or to disguise far more advanced machinery. Many of these function in a time travel context, sometimes even as a time machine (rather than a machine that measures time):

In the Sci-Fi TV series Doctor Who, the Doctor has been seen with a pocket watch. In the episode Silver Nemesis his pocket watch (which contains electronic components) has an alarm indicating a planetary disaster; however, the Doctor travels in time using a TARDIS.

In the American Sci-Fi TV series Voyagers!, the time travel device known as an 'omni' looks like a pocket watch to disguise it.

In the anime series Fullmetal Alchemist, certified state alchemists are given a pocket watch with a military symbol on it. A real-life equivalent of this (modeled after the watch worn by the character Edward Elric with the inscription "Don't Forget, 3 Oct 10" engraved on the inside of the cover) is available from various retailers.