Mechanical watches are connected with centuries-old tradition, elegance and luxury. In today’s post-modern society where we are confronted with wearable technology such as the wise watches, this distinction comes because the true value of this dinosaur technology.
Chronometers date back towards the 1500s with all the first pocket watch, the Nuremberg Egg being invented by Peter Henlein. Nonetheless, you will find debates to this claim which state that it was a 19th century invention. Nevertheless, there is certainly history tied to wind-up timepieces.
Swiss watchmakers dominated the timekeeping industry till the mid 1970s when the Japanese introduced very accurate quartz watches that have been mass-produced at low-cost. By the early 1980s Switzerland was only creating 10 percent in the timepieces in the world. Two-thirds of watchmaking jobs within the country also disappeared. This was aptly called the Quartz Crisis inside the market.
Mechanical wristwatches did make a comeback within the late 1990s after the successful introduction of chronometers that used the quartz design and style. They have been marketed on the worth of style instead of around the accuracy of telling time. The market banked on this good results to re-introduce the old technology of the automatic chronometers. At which time they had been presented as cautiously crafted (and some even handcrafted) luxury products linked to tradition dating back for the 1500s. This was a re-definition of its value as they have been historically perceived as precise metronomes.
What helped the resurgence of those luxury items was the discovery that they had been extremely valued by collectors who strongly guarded tradition. When the market was extremely fragile and was thought to collapse, these collectors started buying the wristwatches at auctions at record rates. This gave the message that there was underlying worth to the ancient technology. In another instance, an old Zenith employee hid all the moulds required to generate the horologes when other organizations had been disposing or scrapping theirs. These enthusiasts and also the old employee are now noticed in history because the guardians of tradition.
It was also essential within the industry’s revival to redefine the competition. It wasn’t any longer, at this point, competing with quartz, but with horologes in its own league – which is the high-end marketplace.
This is the same pattern that we’ve noticed with the resurgence in the vinyl records or with fountain pens. Record collectors who valued them have facilitated their comeback and redefined competitors for these collectibles aside from the downloadable music that this society now enjoys.