50 Fun Facts About Watches

Which watch model did Buzz Aldrin wear on the Moon during Apollo 11, earning the nickname Moonwatch?

The Speedmaster became the first watch worn on the Moon after surviving NASA's 1965 trials within about five seconds a day. It had been launched in 1957 for sport and racing.

Which singer wore the asymmetrical Hamilton Ventura, an early electric watch, in the film Blue Hawaii?

Elvis Presley wore the Ventura, a case designed by Richard Arbib. Hamilton had introduced the world's first electric watch, the Electric 500, in 1957.

Which cartoon character's 1933 Ingersoll watch became a million-dollar line and saved its maker from ruin?

Mickey Mouse watches were unveiled at the Chicago World's Fair in June 1933. Their maker, Waterbury Clock, had been struggling through the Great Depression.

Which radioactive element made early watch dials glow and poisoned the women who painted them?

Radium paint went on with fine brushes that workers were told to point between their lips. The lawsuits brought by the Radium Girls left a lasting mark on American labour law.

Which mineral, vibrating thousands of times a second, has kept battery watches on time since the 1969 Seiko Astron?

Quartz in most watches is cut into a tiny tuning fork that vibrates 32,768 times a second. The first Astron, unveiled in Tokyo on Christmas Day 1969, cost about as much as a medium-sized car.

Which shellfish names the waterproof Rolex case that Mercedes Gleitze wore on a 1927 English Channel swim?

Oyster was the name given to the sealed, dustproof case of 1926. Gleitze wore one on a necklace as she swam, becoming the first Rolex ambassador.

Which actor's own Rolex Daytona sold for $17.8 million at a New York auction in 2017?

Paul Newman had given the watch to his daughter's boyfriend in 1984. Its sale set a record price for a wristwatch at the time.

Which mountain did an expedition equipped with Rolex watches first climb in 1953, the year of the first Rolex Explorer?

Everest was first climbed by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, whose expedition was given a Rolex to wear and return for testing in thin air and deep cold.

Which plastic Swiss watch brand was launched in 1983 to fight back against cheap battery watches?

Swatch is a contraction of "second watch": a casual, low-cost accessory to own beside a serious timepiece. Its first twelve models were unveiled in Zürich.

Which Swiss brand first served as official Olympic timekeeper at the Los Angeles Games of 1932?

Omega began in 1848 as Louis Brandt's workshop in La Chaux-de-Fonds and took its present name only in 1903, after a line of watches that had sold under it.

Which actor made the square Heuer Monaco famous by wearing it in the 1971 racing film Le Mans?

Steve McQueen's link to the Monaco outlived the watch itself. Dropped in the mid-1970s, it was reintroduced in 1998 on renewed interest in his legacy.

Which Casio watch line, launched in 1983, did engineer Kikuo Ibe design to survive a ten-metre fall?

G-Shock began after Ibe bumped into a pedestrian and the watch his father had given him shattered on the ground. His team built nearly 200 prototypes before the first model.

Which tech company's smartwatch, released in 2015, outsold the entire Swiss watch industry in 2020?

Apple put its first model on sale in April 2015, and it quickly became the world's best-selling wearable device.

Which conflict made the wristwatch standard kit for soldiers, in a style known as the trench watch?

The First World War made pocket watches impractical in combat. Until then wristwatches, known as wristlets, had been worn almost exclusively by women.

Which Rolex dive watch did Sean Connery wear as James Bond in his first four films?

The Submariner went into production in 1953, rated to a depth of 100 metres. Bond kept wearing one as late as Licence to Kill in 1989.

Which small knob, usually on the right of a wristwatch case, winds the spring and sets the time?

The crown sits on the right so that a watch worn on the left wrist can be wound with the right hand. Before it arrived in the 19th century, watches were wound with a separate key.

Which ring around a dive watch's glass rotates so a diver can read off elapsed time underwater?

The bezel on a dive watch is ratcheted to turn one way only, so an accidental knock can make a dive look longer but never shorter.

Which watch type, invented by Louis Moinet in 1816 for astronomy, has a built-in stopwatch?

A chronograph is started, stopped and reset to zero by pushers on the side of the case, while small sub-dials count off the minutes and hours.

Which word describes a watch that winds itself as you move, an idea dating back to the 1770s?

Automatic watches carry a semicircular weight that pivots as the arm moves. The earliest credible example was a pocket watch by the Swiss maker Abraham-Louis Perrelet.

Which Paris jeweller made a 1904 wristwatch for aviator Alberto Santos-Dumont and later the Tank?

Cartier built the first after Santos-Dumont complained that a pocket watch was impractical while flying. The Tank took its outline from the newly introduced armoured fighting vehicle.

Which lower-priced sister brand did Rolex founder Hans Wilsdorf create for Rolex dealers to sell?

Tudor has been run as its own company since 1946. Its early watches put third-party movements inside Rolex-quality cases and bracelets to keep the price down.

Which American brand hired newsman John Cameron Swayze to run live television torture tests on its watches?

Timex debuted as a brand in 1950, built on its president's belief that an inexpensive watch would sell if it was both accurate and durable.

Which watch brand aired what is called the first television advertisement, before a 1941 baseball game?

Bulova ran the spot on 1 July 1941, the first day paid advertising was allowed on American television. Its Accutron of 1960 kept time with a tuning fork instead of a balance wheel.

Which Geneva firm, owned by the Stern family since 1932, made the first Swiss wristwatch in 1868?

Patek Philippe built that watch for Countess Koscowicz of Hungary. The Stern brothers, who bought the firm during the Great Depression, had been its supplier of dials.

Which Swiss brand's Navitimer, launched in 1954 for pilots, carries a circular slide rule?

Breitling first fitted the slide rule to its Chronomat in the 1940s. A version of the Navitimer carried the logo of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association on its dial.

Which Swiss brand's winged hourglass, registered in 1889, is the oldest unchanged trademark active at WIPO?

Longines had its name trademarked in 1880, nine years before the logo, after counterfeiters began passing off copies of its watches.

Which Florence-founded brand made dive watches for the Italian Navy and sold none to civilians until 1993?

Panerai's early navy watches were made for it by Rolex, using pocket-watch movements from the Swiss firm Cortébert.

Which Swiss luxury brand, founded in 1980, is named after the French word for a ship's porthole?

Hublot caused a stir at the 1980 Basel fair by pairing a precious-metal case with a natural rubber strap, and took more than $2 million in its first year.

Which brand's Museum Watch, designed by Nathan George Horwitt, has a bare dial with a single dot at 12?

Movado's lone dot stands for the sun at high noon. In 1960 the design became the first watch dial in the permanent collection of New York's Museum of Modern Art.

Which tennis champion did Richard Mille, maker of featherweight watches, begin sponsoring in 2010?

Rafael Nadal's RM 027 weighed 20 grams including its strap, with a movement made from titanium and a lithium alloy used in aeronautics.

Which sports watch by designer Gérald Genta, first shown in 1972, took its exposed screws from diving helmets?

The Royal Oak is considered the first luxury sports watch in the world. Audemars Piguet presented it at the Basel fair in the middle of a crisis for Swiss watchmaking.

Which Jaeger-LeCoultre watch was created in 1931 to survive the hard knocks of a polo game?

The Reverso, its name inspired by the Latin for "I turn around", has a case that swivels in its carrier to protect the watch glass.

Which airline worked with Rolex on the GMT-Master so its pilots could read two time zones at once?

Pan Am wanted its crews to read Greenwich Mean Time beside local time on ocean crossings. The rotating ring was split into red for day and blue for night.

Which ocean explorer wore the Blancpain Fifty Fathoms, a dive watch developed with French Navy divers?

Cousteau wore one, and from 1958 the Fifty Fathoms was also standard issue for the US Navy's combat divers.

In which city did Hans Wilsdorf and Alfred Davis found the watch firm that became Rolex, in 1905?

London was home to Wilsdorf and Davis, a business importing watches from Switzerland to England. Rolex is now headquartered in Geneva.

Which country is home to A. Lange & Söhne, a luxury watchmaker nationalised in 1948 and relaunched in 1990?

Germany's fine watchmaking is centred on Glashütte in Saxony, where Ferdinand Adolph Lange founded the firm in 1845.

Which military alliance names the nylon watch strap the UK Ministry of Defence introduced in 1973?

NATO straps were specified in one colour, Admiralty Grey. Soldiers later added the stripes of their regimental ties and stable belts.

Which time, forming a smile that frames the maker's name, do analogue watches often show in advertisements?

10:10 is the usual choice, with 1:50 as its mirror image. Digital displays in adverts often read 12:08 instead, which lights up more segments.

Which rotating cage, patented by Abraham-Louis Breguet in 1801, counters gravity's pull on a pocket watch?

The tourbillon turns the whole escapement through 360 degrees to average out errors of position. Fewer than a thousand are thought to have been made before 1945.

What do watchmakers call any feature beyond telling the time, such as an alarm or date display?

A complication can be as humble as a date window. A watch that shows only the time is known as a simple movement.

Which scale around a watch's rim converts the seconds taken over a measured distance into speed?

A tachymeter turns elapsed seconds into units per hour. Start timing at one marker and, at the next, the seconds hand points to the average speed.

Which coiled ribbon of steel, tightened by winding, stores the energy that powers a mechanical watch?

The mainspring made clocks small and portable enough to become pocket watches by 1600. Its invention is often wrongly credited to Nuremberg's Peter Henlein, around 1511.

Which synthetic gemstone, rated 9 on the Mohs scale, makes the most scratch-resistant and costly watch glass?

Sapphire is hard to cut and polish, which is why it costs the most. Acrylic, the cheapest option, resists impact best and is fitted to most military watches.

Which watch mechanism, patented for pocket watches in 1889, shows the right date even through leap years?

A perpetual calendar allows for the different lengths of the months as well as leap years, so the date never needs resetting at the end of February.

What name is given to the projections at each end of a watch case where the strap or bracelet attaches?

Lugs are often machined with the case from one solid piece of stainless steel. The now-standard wire type was patented by Dimier Frères & Cie in 1903.

Which term, for a style created in the 1760s, describes a watch cut away to show its moving parts?

The skeleton watch was the work of the French clockmaker André-Charles Caron. True examples also trim every non-essential scrap of metal from the bridges and wheels.

Which chiming mechanism, devised for telling the time in the dark, sounds it at the press of a button?

A minute repeater uses different tones for hours, quarter hours and minutes. Edward Barlow and Daniel Quare both claimed the repeating watch in the 1680s, and the patent dispute went Quare's way.

Which word, long printed on watch dials beside a number such as 17, names the tiny ruby bearings inside?

Jewels were patented for watches in the early 1700s to cut friction at the pivots. Makers listed the count on the face or back as an advertising point.

Which Citizen watch line, launched in 1995, is powered mainly by light falling on a cell behind the dial?

Eco-Drive watches bank the charge in a rechargeable cell. Depending on the model, a full one keeps running in the dark for anything from 30 days to more than eight years.

Which ocean trench did an experimental Rolex reach in 1960, strapped outside the bathyscaphe Trieste?

The Mariana dive took the watch 10,916 metres down with Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh. In 2012 James Cameron repeated the trip with a Rolex on his submarine's robotic arm.