Today, wristwatches are as ubiquitous as flies on a summer day. But at the turn of the 20^th century they were only a novelty. Back then, most men, and many women, carried a pocket watch. And unlike many of today’s wristwatches, these personal timepieces have stood the test of time. For many, pocket watches have a heart and soul all their own and recapture the romance of a bygone era.

German locksmith Peter Henlein from Nuremburg was the first to invent a portable clock, the forerunner of the pocket watch, during the first decade of the 16^th century. Henlein’s invention of a spring-driven mechanism made the personal timepiece possible. Spiral springs could be wound and uncoiled to move the hour hand of the clock. Although Henlein’s invention was a giant leap forward from hanging weights, it was highly inaccurate because coiled springs don't unwind at a constant speed.

However, Henlein housed his portable clocks in heavy drum-shaped brass boxes, typically four or five inches wide and about three inches thick. Back then, "pockets" were small bags or pouches used to carry valuables that hung from a person's belt. Pickpockets could easily snatch these pouches. Cautious people began to hide their pocket inside their clothing. But wearing a bulky clock inside your clothing was not only uncomfortable, but inconvenient. So people solved this problem by wearing their clock suspended on a cord or chain around their necks.

By 1653, tailors had begun sewing small pockets called "fobs," from the German word fuppe, into the waistband of breeches, in which to carry a watch, money, or other valuables. The fob, which means "to cheat or misrepresent," was meant to cheat any would-be thief of easily stealing a person's valuables. Another change occurred on October 7, 1666 when King Charles II of England issued a Royal Proclamation which said that men were to wear a coat and a vest instead of a doublet and cloak.

At the end of the 18th Century, improvements in watch-making resulted in watches that were much thinner and more rounded. Tailors sewed smaller fob pockets into vests so that people could carry a watch attached to a chain.

Early watches only had an hour hand. The dial wasn’t covered with glass, but usually had a hinged brass cover, often decoratively pierced with grillwork so the time could be read without opening. Watchmakers created movements of iron or steel, held together with tapered pins and wedges, until after 1550 when screws appeared. Many of the movements included striking or alarm mechanisms. The shape of the watches soon evolved into a rounded form called Nuremberg eggs. And even later in the century watchmakers began to create watches shaped like books, animals, fruit, stars, flowers, insects, crosses, and even skulls. To wind and set the watch, the owner had to open the back and fit a key to a square arbor and turn it.

Early watchmakers, many of whom were either blacksmiths or locksmiths, made the first watches from steel. Eventually locksmiths dominated watchmaking as watches grew smaller and silver and gold replaced steel. At this time pocket watches were typically four or five inches wide and about three inches thick.

The first solution to uneven unwinding came when watchmakers realized the spring uncoiled at a more constant pace when it wasn’t wound tightly. So they came up with several solutions. One was the stackfreed, a cam with an additional spring that compensated for the main spring's changes in speed. Another was the fusee, a stop, made of stiff hog bristle, that prevented the spring from being wound too tightly.

In 1675 several watchmakers discovered that a spiral spring attached to the balance greatly increased accuracy. Suddenly, watches reflected the correct time within minutes rather than being off by close to an hour. Until this time, watches had to be wound twice a day. A fourth wheel added to the movement decreased the winding required to once per day. Less than 100 years later, watchmakers added a hand to measure seconds. As years passed, people wanted calendars to mark the day, date and month, phases of the moon, as well as alarms, chimes and music.

Early pocket watches had no covering to protect the face or the hour hand. In the 18^th century English watchmakers began creating gold and silver cases to slide the watch to protect it. The manufacturer's name or mark is usually found on this case. If it doesn't match the name on the watch, then the pair case is not the original, but a replacement. Watchmakers added glass crystals to protect the dial around 1610 but because they were translucent, people still had to remove them to read the time.

English watchmakers added jewels, usually second-rate rubies in the 18^th century, as bearings in the watches to prevent friction and wear between metal parts. They also used oil to maintain the regularity of watches and to stop the parts from freezing up. However, watchmakers from other countries didn’t adopt "jeweling" for nearly another 100 years. Today, the number of jewels a watch has is a sign of its quality and durability. Most pocket watches have between 7 and 21 jewels.

One of the most important parts of a pocket watch is the escapement, a device that controls the rotation of the wheels and the motion of the hands. Before 1720, almost all watch movements employed verge escapements, which created a lot of friction and didn’t include any jeweling. Consequently, a verge watch wasn’t as accurate. The cylinder escapement, developed by Abbé de Hautefeuille early in the 18th century and first used by George Graham, an English watchmaker, was an improvement. Towards the end of the 18th century, Josiah Emery and Abraham-Louis Breguet began using the lever escapement, invented by Thomas Mudge in 1759. With this, a pocket watch could keep time to within a minute a day. Lever escapements became common about 1820 and are still in use in most mechanical watches.

In 1857 the American Watch Company in Waltham, Massachusetts introduced the Waltham Model 57, the first pocket watch to use interchangeable parts. This cut the cost of manufacture and repair.

Pocket watches come in either of two types of cases—hunting or open-faced. A hunting-case watch has a spring-hinged circular metal lid or cover that closes over the watch dial and crystal, protecting them from dust, scratches and other damage or debris while hunting. The majority of antique pocket watches have the lid hinges at the 9 o'clock position and the stem and crown of the watch at the 3 o'clock position. Modern hunting-case watches usually have the hinges for the lid at the 6 o'clock position and the stem and crown at the 12 o'clock position.

An open-faced watch is one in which the case doesn’t have a metal cover to protect the crystal. It’s typical for an open-faced watch to have the pendant ring located at 12:00 and the seconds dial located at 6:00. In both styles of watch cases, the seconds dial was always at the 6 o'clock position. By 1900, the open face watch took over and hunting case watches became less commonplace. After 1908, watches used on the railroads had to be open-faced with the winding stem at 12:00.

Watchmakers made cases of silver and gold. Many were gold-filled, with two thin sheets of gold on the outside around a thicker layer of brass. Watchmakers also used a variety of nickel-based silver-colored materials, with names like silverode.

Pocket watches from the 16th to the third quarter of the 19th century had key-wind and key-set movements. A watch key was necessary to wind the watch and to set the time. The watch owner would open the caseback and put the key over the winding-arbor or onto the setting-arbor, which connected with the minute-wheel and turned the hands. Some had the setting-arbor on the front of the watch, making it necessary to remove the crystal to set the time.

Companies such as Elgin, Waltham, and Hamilton invested in pocket watch design in the late 19^th century because railroads needed highly accurate, precision timepieces so their locomotive engineers could maintain strict schedules, thus avoiding collisions. On April 19, 1891, a train engineer's watch stopped for four minutes and then started again. This temporary mechanical failure resulted in a train wreck on the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway in Kipton, Ohio that resulted in nine casualties.

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 clocks and watches. This led to the adoption in 1893 of stringent standards for pocket watches used in railroading. These stated that railroad watches must have at least 15 jewels, be accurate to within 30 seconds per week, have a white face with black Arabic numbers and each minute delineated, be a size 16 or 18, adjust to five positions, and be temperature compensated. As early watchmakers discovered, not only would cold and heat cause the watch movement to slow or speed up, but so did the watch's position. Railroad watches had to stand up to constant abuse from the jarring and swaying of early trains. Railroad companies required engineers to have their watches inspected regularly and to submit a certificate stating their reliability to supervisors.

Until the start of the 20th century, though, the pocket watch was predominant and people considered the wristwatch feminine and unmanly. But around 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, the wristwatch gained popularity.

A collector can determine the age of an antique pocket watch by checking the manufacturer's serial number in a reference guide. The serial number on an American watch is on the movement inside the watch, not on the watch face or the casing. Older English watches have hallmarks that can be researched to find the manufacturing date. European watches, however, are harder to date. Sometimes they have serial numbers, but often not. Although patent numbers can be used for dating, collectors should be aware that the name on a watch's face isn’t necessarily the name of the manufacturer. Watch manufacturers often printed a company's name on the dial in return for ordering a specific number.

Waltham pocket watches are very collectible because watch designs changed often in the early years and the company often made only a few of some models. A good example is the Waltham Model Appleton, a size 20, 18-carat gold watch with a rear key wind that has sold for $10,000. Because Waltham made so many watches and in such variety, collectors can buy a pocket watch in running condition from as low as $100 up to the several thousands.

When purchasing an antique pocket watch, collectors should remember that millions were made—Waltham and Elgin alone manufactured over 100 million—and there are still millions in circulation, thus not all pocket watches may have a high value. Their prices depend on supply and demand. But with pocket watches, as the demand increases, the supply decreases.

From the time of Shakespeare to the end of the Age of Steam the pocket watch reigned supreme as a portable timekeeper. Its story combines history, engineering, ingenuity, and precision manufacturing into one fascinating timepiece. What more could a collector want?

As an avid collector of a variety of antiques and collectibles for the last 20 years, Bob Brooke knows what he’s writing about. Besides writing about antiques, Brooke has also sold at flea markets and worked in an antique shop, so he knows the business side too. His articles have appeared in many antiques and consumer publications, including British Heritage, Antique Week, Southeastern Antiquing and Collecting Magazine, www.OldandSold.com, and many others. To read more of his work, visit his main website at www.bobbrooke.com or his specialty antiques site at www.theantiquesalmanac.com