Watch..Do I really need one?

It's the year 1500 B.C. and the teenager Seth living in Cairo,Egypt has no idea what time it is, even he doesn't know he is no more a teenager.

He always has a dream of visiting a distant town Luxor,Egypt where the world's first sundial is located. Although he is not sure it would be easy for him to observe the time but the sundial is more of a monument than a tool.

Fast forward to the year 1524 and Italians have created the first modern 'watch'. It took almost over hundred years that is in 1675 when concepts of minutes and Roman numerals were inculcated in a watch.

In the older days (late1800s) men used to keep pocket watches and only women used to wear wrist watches. They were also passed on from one generation to another. Wrist watch usage among men came into existence after the same was used by army men on their wrists.

Paul Newman with his Rolex Daytona

Now in October 2017, Paul Newman's (American actor and racer) Rolex Daytona was sold for whopping $17.75 million dollars. A new Rolex Daytona would cost you around $12,400, so why the watch which was already owned by someone, was sold 1400 times more than its current price? And most importantly, in the world of continuous technological advancements every second, why many luxury watch companies, which usually rely on traditional methods of watch-making, are still surviving?

Omega Speedmaster used for Moon Exploration

                               

Cut to July 1969 where Omega Speedmaster Chronograph became the only watch which was trusted for the Moon exploration mission.The Speedmaster was launched in 1957 but its official space legacy started in 1965, when NASA qualified it for use on its piloted missions. Since then, it has been worn on all six lunar landings and earned the nickname “the Moonwatch”.

Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay

Or 12 years before that on 29th of May, 1953, Sir Edmund Hillary wore a Rolex while he was atop at 8848m on Mount Everest which eventually named as Rolex Explorer.

Film Maker  James Cameron descended 10,908 metres (35,787 feet) to reach Challenger Deep with his Rolex

  

The question of "Whether I really need a watch today?" is itself an outcome of a long drawn cultural shift which changed the definition of watch from being a machine to a tool.The legacy of watchmakers and car-makers is quite analogous. Different car-makers are known for their own expertise like Ferrari and Lamborghini for speed, Fords for power and Rolls Royce for sheer luxury. Watches too has profound classification depending upon their accuracy, aesthetics, toughness and fashion. As an example Omega Chronometer is accurate up-to 3 second in a 24 hour duration, Rolex Deep Sea is fully functional at 12800 feet or a Victorinox Inox can happily withstand a weight of a Bulldozer over it. So when it was a question of a clinical military mission where numerous lives were on stake or estimating the time when your Oxygen cylinders would run out in depths of Mariana Trench, prices for watches were always given a second priority, no matter how much they costed. In this way, not only tradition of watchmaking was intact but craftsmanship was also duly respected.

 It was during the time of 1970s-80s when people started dropping their identities of a factory-worker, and  nurtured their individualism by setting up businesses,becoming doctors and teachers.They no longer required someone superior to them to remind of their time, in contrast they set up their own schedules according to their own preferences.This resulted in mass requirement for watches by the middle class gentry. Casio , Seiko and Swatch came in to the rescue and provided what was required at that time : Affordable and Innovative watches.They still continue to be among top revenue generating watch brands with thousands of new models rolling out each year. This datum shift was key in changing the definition of a watch,  mentioned earlier from a machine to a mere tool.

HMT Banglore plant initial days

India , being a developing country the change though has been remarkable.With HMT and Allwyn coming into picture in mid 1950s, every Indian man and woman started recognizing their desires to own one. HMT collaborated with Citizen watches to set up a manufacturing plant in Bangalore, while Allwyn set up a plant in Hyderabad with Seiko. These giants dominated Indian markets as late as mid 1990s after which, Allwyn was defunct in 1995 and HMT in 2017. Since the last two decades the market is dominated by manufacturers Titan and Fastrack, known for making aesthetically appealing , cheap and mainly Quartz(movement) watches.

With a surge in sales of Mobile phones and fitness bands in last few years, wearing a watch is considered too mainstream and it is reflected well in its dropped sales in the following years too.Watches are treated as a dress accessory than being a mechanical masterpiece. This encourages small production houses to manufacture cheap and pirated versions of reputed brands.As an example, they can sell a copy of Patek Philippe for as low as 2500 Rupees, which in contrast takes around 5-6 years to make and costs 2000 times more.

Apart from a visible decline in the eagerness among the mid-value watches, the demand for high end watches have sky rocketed in last 10 years. This resulted in prices almost getting doubling up in last three years thanks to social media and e-commerce.It is well said somewhere that "Diamond is to a woman, a watch is to a man". A watch is not only a time displaying tool, but a heritage that can be transferred from generations to generations.So a magnum opus which amalgamates time and human creativity should be chosen wisely.

 Dalai Lama received his Patek Philippe ( ref. 1526) in 1943 from President Roosevelt