There are very few objects in human history that have traveled as far as the watch.
From a bulky ornament dangling off a nobleman's belt in 16th-century Nuremberg, to the clean, precise timepiece strapped to your wrist right now, the analog watch is one of the most compelling stories in the history of design and technology.
At Nixon, we think knowing where watches come from makes wearing one feel even better. So let's get into a brief history of analog watches.
The History of Analog Watches
It Started With a Spring
Before there were watches, there were clocks... and they were anything but portable. The pivotal change came in the early 15th century with the invention of the mainspring, a coiled metal ribbon that could store energy and release it gradually to power a mechanism.
This innovation is what made portable timekeeping possible for the first time.
By the early 1500s, a German clockmaker named Peter Henlein had used this technology to create small, wearable clock-watches in Nuremberg. These early pieces were oval-shaped and often called "Nuremberg eggs."
They were not particularly accurate, but the concept was revolutionary. For the first time, a person could carry time with them.
The Age of the Pocket Watch
Over the next two centuries, the pocket watch evolved from a crude curiosity into a precision instrument. By the 17th and 18th centuries, watchmakers across Europe were advancing the mechanics significantly.
The introduction of the balance spring in the 1670s dramatically improved accuracy, and pocket watches became a genuine tool for navigation, industry, and daily life.
By the 19th century, falling production costs and industrial manufacturing made pocket watches accessible to the working class for the first time. No longer the exclusive territory of nobles and merchants, a pocket watch became a standard item for anyone who needed to show up somewhere on time.
The railroad industry in particular drove demand for precise, synchronized timekeeping, which pushed watchmakers to build even better movements.
The classic image of this era is the hunter-case pocket watch on a chain, tucked into a waistcoat pocket. It was practical, it was dignified, and for most men of that period, it was the only form of personal timekeeping they would ever need.
The First Wristwatches
Wristwatches did not begin with men.
In the 19th century, small watches worn on the wrist were considered jewelry, primarily a fashion accessory for women. The first formally recognized wristwatch is generally credited to Abraham-Louis Breguet, who created a bracelet-style timepiece in 1810 for the Queen of Naples. Patek Philippe followed in 1868 with another notable early wristwatch, also made for royalty.
In 1904, Louis Cartier designed the Cartier Santos for his friend Alberto Santos-Dumont, a Brazilian aviation pioneer who needed a way to read the time without taking his hands off the controls of his aircraft. This was one of the first practical wristwatches designed specifically for a man, and it pointed toward a future where the wristwatch would be about function just as much as form.
Still, by the early 20th century, wristwatches on men were a novelty at best and considered effeminate by many.
That perception was about to change dramatically.
World War I Changes Everything
The trench warfare of World War I created a problem that the pocket watch simply could not solve.
Soldiers needed to synchronize artillery strikes down to the second, coordinate movements across massive fronts, and check the time while keeping both hands free in dangerous, cramped conditions. Pulling a pocket watch from a vest pocket was slow, clumsy, and in many cases, deadly.
The solution was improvised at first. Soldiers began soldering wire lugs onto their pocket watches and strapping them to their wrists with leather bands, creating what became known as "trench watches."
As the war progressed, military demand surged, and watchmakers responded by designing purpose-built wristwatches for men, what we now call field watches. These pieces prioritized legibility, durability, and reliability above all else.
By the time WWI ended, millions of men had spent years relying on wristwatches in combat. The stigma was gone. The wristwatch came home with the soldiers, and it never went back to being a women's accessory again.
A 1916 article in The New York Times acknowledged the wristwatch had moved from novelty to permanent fixture in modern life.
The Mechanical Golden Age
Through the 1920s, 30s, 40s, and 50s, the analog wristwatch entered a golden age of mechanical innovation. Automatic movements, which self-wind using the motion of the wearer's wrist, were introduced in 1926 and solved one of the biggest frustrations of mechanical watches: forgetting to wind them.
Chronograph functions were refined and standardized.
Water resistance was introduced.
Stainless steel cases replaced fragile early designs.
This era also produced many of the watch designs that remain icons today. The clean dials, simple indices, and timeless proportions of mid-century watches still influence designers across the industry, including here at Nixon.
Good design does not expire.
The Quartz Revolution
On Christmas Day 1969, Seiko released the Astron, the world's first quartz wristwatch, and the industry was turned upside down.
Instead of a complex mechanical movement driven by springs and gears, quartz watches used a battery to send an electrical charge through a tiny quartz crystal, causing it to vibrate at exactly 32,768 times per second. A microchip counted those oscillations and used them to move the watch hands with extraordinary accuracy.
Quartz watches were cheaper to produce, more accurate than most mechanical watches, and required almost no maintenance beyond the occasional battery replacement. Through the 1970s, a period now referred to as the "Quartz Crisis," Swiss mechanical watchmaking was genuinely threatened by the flood of affordable, precise Japanese quartz timepieces.
Many storied Swiss brands did not survive.
But quartz also democratized watchmaking in a real way. For the first time, virtually anyone could own a reliable, accurate timepiece. And for a brand like Nixon, built on the idea that great watches should be accessible to real people with real lives, quartz movements are a core part of our lineup to this day.
The Analog Watch Today
The analog watch has outlasted every prediction of its death. It survived the Quartz Crisis. It survived the digital watch boom of the 1980s. And today, it holds its ground alongside smartwatches and fitness trackers with quiet confidence. Wearing an analog watch is a deliberate choice in 2026.
It says something about how you relate to time, to craft, and to style.
At Nixon, we have been making analog watches since we launched out of Encinitas, California in 1998. From the classic simplicity of the Sentry to the bold design of the Player, our analog lineup is built on the same principles that have driven great watchmaking for centuries: precision, durability, and a design worth looking at.
Whether you are drawn to a clean quartz movement or a mechanical automatic, the analog watch connects you to over 500 years of human ingenuity.
That is worth something, no matter what time it is.
