A Tale Of Perfect Watch Design

During the 1950s and '60s, a new type of watch came to the fore—dressy timepieces that were perfect for office workers

- Bibek Bhattacharya

I am part of a generation that has seen the advance of technology change the world radically, especially in communications. Just 40 years ago, it was difficult to get a landline phone connection, and if you did, calling people up was a ritual that involved speaking with switchboard operators. Between my high school years and early 30s, a span of just 15 years, we went from the novelty of wireless "brick phones" to the call-and-text-only feature phones to the earliest smartphones, a positively dizzying pace of change.

As a natural progression, it was inevitable that smart devices would take up residence on our wrists (as they soon will around our necks, in our glasses, and who knows where else) and start challenging the hegemony of wristwatches, these quaint circular throwbacks that do nothing else but tell the time. But these holdouts from the vanishing analogue world have been surprisingly resilient.

Why is this so, I have often wondered. One answer could be that wristwatches have a simplicity and single-minded focus on doing just one thing consistently. In doing so, they perform an invaluable function of focusing our brains. We quickly glance at our wrists when we need to tell the time. For a fleeting collection of moments each day, when we are telling the time, it is the only data that our minds are consuming—in those moments, the constant hum of digital distraction briefly takes a backseat.