It seems like watches have been around forever. Nobody alive today remembers a time when there hasn't been watches. Over that time period there have many stylse and many new innovations.
The mechanical watch, the quartz watch. The list is endless. Today it seems s we have given up finding new ways of showing the time and any new innovations are normally to do with style. How and where we wear the watch has become important. Anything new that comes in is basically a redesign of an old type and sometimes it hard to realize that it wasn't long ago that this type of watch was actually invented.
This article is an overview of types of watches. Firstly the quartz watch. This is a type of watch that first came into the public eye in the early seventies. It was and is a digital watch that uses Quartz crystal to power it. Over the years it has advanced immensly and has many features including stopwatches and timers. The original wristwatch was the analogue.
This type of watch has individual hour, minute and second hands. Nowadays most analogue watches wind back automatically, though there was a time, and you can still buy them now, that they had to be wound back daily by the owner. There are other more specialist watches used by the army and divers.
These have watches have been put into the marketplace after being used by these groups. It was the Navy SEALS that first used the Luminox watches for example. They were perfect for the SEALS because they could check the time under water. Of course these watches are also waterproof.
One innovation of watches in recent years has been the number of features that you can get on them. As well as the aforementioned stopwatches and timers there have been digital watches with calculators, alarms, recording devices and backlights. Even analog watches have got into the act. Some expensive ones also have stopwatches and display at the side of the face the month and date. As a fashion accessory watches have come into their own.
Watches can come with leather, metal, rubber and plastic straps. You can now walk into a watchmaker's and change the strap if you don't like the one it came with. Some sport watches make the stopwatch and timer the biggest feature.
They often have very flashy stopwatches where even lap times can be counted and sometimes saved. At the front of these will be two large buttons to start and stop the timer. In recent years though these watches have been taken over by the mobile phone. These can do everything a watch can do and more. One thinks the only way the watch can survive is by going back to the old times and selling self as an attractive fashion accessory.
Gregg Hall is an author living in Navarre Beach, Florida. Find more about this as well as wrist watches at http://www.watchesplusmore.com
