Watch A watch is a portable timekeeping device. Watches first appeared during the 1400s and were designed to be worn on the body, usually on a chain around the waist or the neck. Some of the earliest known examples were made by Peter Henlein, a locksmith based in Nuremburg, Germany. Early watches used the same verge escapement as those in contemporaneous clocks. The addition of the balance spring invented by Robert Hooke and Christiaan Huygens (working independently of one another) by 1657 greatly increased the accuracy of watches. Most modern mechanical watches use the lever escapement, invented by the British clockmaker Thomas Mudge around 1755. Wristwatches did not appear until the 1800s. Currently, watchmaking is considered an endangered craft in the UK. For a history of watchmaking, read Hands of Time: A watchmaker’s history of time by UK watchmaker and horologist Dr Rebecca Struthers. Dr Struthers is one of a handful of UK watchmakers that can make watches from scratch. Reference Struthers, R. 2023. Hands of Time: A watchmaker’s history of time. Great Britain: Hodder & Stoughton.
