Over the centuries clocks have been utilized as a symbol of standing by those who wear them. Their precision, elegance and convenience are just some of the attributes that watches and clocks represent. Frequently they're purchased only for their cultured looks. And at other times they are acquired due to their technical attributes like being accurate to the last moment or even millisecond. This is what makes clocks and watches so collectible and in a number of cases they can command high sums of cash.

Whether you collect the new high precision watches or ones that come from a past era, the truth is that over time this spare time interest has become a high turnover business. And picking up watches is in lots of circles thought of as a smart form of investing.

At the beginning of the last century the clocks that were available for men or ladies were firstly pocket clocks, and then clocks that held by a pendant attached to the lining of jackets or corsets. The advent of war, industrialization, and the development of the game activities, brought over new trends which extended to not simply the way we dressed, but also how we carried our clocks.

It is often said that it's a nanny who invented wristwatches at about the end of the 19th century, who fixed a clock round her wrist by employing a silk band. The first watches to be made were in fact smaller models of pocket clocks that were fitted with a leather strap. Once this product hit the market more modern designs started to be produced based around this same idea.

It was Louis Cartier who first made the kind of watches we see today when he created a watch for a flying pioneer hero by the name Santos Dumont. By 1911 this same kind of watch was on general sale. That very same sort of watch became the plan of what wristwatches look like to this day.

Just after the design of wrist'clocks' began to diversify away from the classical round shape that had been in vogue up till that time. From the Cartier classical wrist watch other makes of watch started to appear which were indicated by their shape. Movado is the perfect example of these new designs when it came out with the'Polyplan' shaped watch. Then came the famously and cryptically called'clock reference n. 1593' by Patek Philippe which was an oblong formed watch.

From 1913 onwards more watches started to be developed in all shapes and styles. From the 'gondola' watch of Patek Phillipe to Louis Cartiers ''Tank''; named therefore because it was inspired by the form of English armored autos of the time. These are watches which are rather asked for. There were other countless watch makers like Audemars Piguet, Vacheron Constantin who together with Patek Philippe and Cartier came out with plenty of other designs which added other features to the watches like lunar phases, month and day the majority of which are found in modern watches now.

Of course we couldn't mention wrist watches without discussing the most noted of all : the Rolex watch. In the 1920s Rolex debuted in the sector of wrist watches with the sublime Rolex Prince and its revolutionary time' feature made renowned for having the seconds sector' larger than that of the minutes. At the same time Jaeger Le Coultre produced an even more advanced piece called the 'Reverse', also terribly revolutionary in that it could be turn 180 degrees inside its case, therefore defending the crystal and dial. It became surprisingly favored and was only forestalled from achieving even greater success by the recession of the 1930s and the arrival of world war 2.

These early watches of the 1910s to 1930s are what define all the makes of watches that we see and wear today. This brief article has only scratched the outer surface of what is an extremely vast subject which has lots more watch makers with various and revolutionary designs. However it is makers like Rolex, Cartier, Jaeger Le Coultre and the others mentioned that are among the most valuable and collectible, and should you ever be so lucky to get one then ensure you hang on to it - ideally to your wrist.

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