Wrist-Watch

Watch

A watch is a timepiece that is made to be worn on a person. It is usually a wristwatch, worn on the wrist with a strap or bracelet. In addition to the time, modern watches often display the day, date, month and year, and electronic watches may have many other functions.
Most inexpensive and medium-priced watches used mainly for timekeeping are electronic watches with quartz movements.Expensive, collectible watches valued more for their workmanship and aesthetic appeal than for simple timekeeping, often have purely mechanical movements and are powered by springs, even though mechanical movements are less accurate than more affordable quartz movements.
Before wristwatches became popular in the 1920s, most watches were pocket watches, which often had covers and were carried in a pocket and attached to a watch chain or watch fob. Watches evolved in the 17th century from spring powered clocks, which appeared in the 15th century.

Fashion

Wristwatches are often appreciated as jewelry or as collectible works of art rather than just as timepieces. This has created several different markets for wristwatches, ranging from very inexpensive but accurate watches (intended for no other purpose than telling the correct time) to extremely expensive watches that serve mainly as personal adornment or as examples of high achievement in miniaturization and precision mechanical engineering.
Traditionally, men's dress watches appropriate for informal (business), semi-formal, and formal attire are gold, thin, simple, and plain, but recent conflation of dressiness and high price has led to a belief among some that expensive rugged, complicated, or sports watches are also dressy because of their high cost. Some dress watches have a cabochon on the crown and many women's dress watches have faceted gemstones on the face, bezel, or bracelet. Some are made entirely of facetted sapphire (corundum).
Many fashion and department stores offer a variety of less-expensive, trendy, "costume" watches (usually for women), many of which are similar in quality to basic quartz timepieces but which feature bolder designs. In the 1980s, the Swiss Swatch company hired graphic designers to redesign a new annual collection of non-repairable watches.
Still another market is that of "geek" watches—watches that not only tell the time, but incorporate computers, satellite navigation, complications of various orders, and many other features that may be quite removed from the basic concept of timekeeping. A dual-time watch is designed for travelers, allowing them to see what time it is at home when they are elsewhere.
In a variation of the "nerd" watches the time is displayed in a non-standard way: with 24-hour mechanism, the hands turn anticlockwise, the numbers are displayed with LEDs in a binary numbers, etc.
Most companies that produce watches specialize in one or some of these markets. Companies such as Patek Philippe, Blancpain and Jaeger-LeCoultre specialize in simple and complicated mechanical dress watches; companies such as Omega SA, Ball Watch Company, TAG Heuer, Breitling, Panerai and Rolex specialize in rugged, reliable mechanical watches for sport and aviation use. Companies such as Casio, Timex, and Seiko specialize in watches as affordable timepieces or multifunctional computers.

 Computerized multi-function watches

Many computerized wristwatches have been developed, but none have had long-term sales success, because they have awkward user interfaces due to the tiny screens and buttons, and a short battery life. As miniaturized electronics became cheaper, watches have been developed containing calculators, tonometers, barometers, altimeters, video games, digital cameras, keydrives, GPS receivers and cellular phones. In the early 1980s Seiko marketed a watch with a television in it. Such watches have also had the reputation as unsightly and thus mainly geek toys. Several companies have however attempted to develop a computer contained in a wristwatch (see also wearable computer).

 The atomic wrist-watch

Tired of having to set your watch every now and then? Well, how about an atomic clock on your wrist? Developments in technology and timing techniques could make this a distinct possibility.

Modern society relies heavily on precise timing. The most accurate timing devices — the primary atomic clocks in national metrology laboratories — each take up as much space as a large wardrobe and keep time with an accuracy of 1 part in 10¹⁵, or 1 second in 30 million years.

 An atomic watch is a wristwatch that is radio controlled to keep the most accurate time on earth. You never need to set the time or date of an atomic watch because it receives a low-frequency radio signal nightly that keeps it in perfect synchronization with the U.S. Atomic Clock in Colorado.
An atomic watch is handy because it automatically adjusts for Daylight Saving Time (DST), often mispronounced as Daylight Savings Time, leap years and even leap seconds. It contains an internal antenna and program that is set to search once a day for the 60 kHz radio signal emitted from the WWVB transmitter in Ft. Collins. When it finds the signal it decodes the time then sets itself. The Ft. Collins transmitter has a radius of 1,864 miles (3,000 km), making it available to the most of the United States with the exception of Hawaii and Alaska.