For nearly thousands of years people have used devices to keep the measure of time. The ancient Egyptians were the first who divided the day in two 12 hour periods to measure the time. They also used water clocks. The earlier watches relied on the shadows cast by the sun but this did not come out to be good as they were not useful during the night, cloudy weather and during change of seasons. The first clock transferred rotational energy into motions.

Arabic engineers developed water clocks which used gears and weights to work in the 11th century. In the 14th century came the mechanical clocks. Pendulum clocks came in the 18th century followed by atomic clocks in the 20th century. Then from the laboratories came the wrist watches where earlier quartz oscillators were used.

Shadow clocks were the first watches used to measure time during the day but they were at some disadvantages that they could not work during the night and during season changes it could not provide correct time. To overcome this problem the Greeks developed a water clock. The outflow of these watches was replaced by the inflow and these watches also had an indicator rod. After the water clocks came the candle clocks.

These watches consisted of six candles made from 72 pennyweights of wax and the candle was divided into 12 equal parts of 1 inch each. Each mark represented 20 minutes. Then came the incense clocks. These watches had incense sticks with calibrations on them and had threads with weights attached to them. Now started the era of mechanical watches.

The first mechanical alarm clock was the ottoman mechanical clock which could strike an alarm at any user specified time. Then came the mechanical astronomical clock which measured time in minutes. This watch had three hands namely minutes, hours and degrees.

The design was later improved to measure time in seconds. These watches were followed by pendulum clocks which had a long pendulum with consequently slower beats. After this came the first professional watches also known as the pocket watches which were generally built by jewelers. This was a dynamic change in the history of watches and after some time came the wrist watches. As the pocket watches were not very comfortable so came the wrist watches and these gained popularity during the World War 1.

These watches were followed by Marine chronometers which were used to determine longitudes. After all these watches came the quartz watches which were first built in Canada and became quite popular due to the precision in time. These watches were quite delicate, built with vacuum tubes and thus precise. In the end came the most precise watches called the atomic clocks.

These watches can keep the time accuracy of a few seconds upto thousands of years and are generally used to calibrate other clocks and time keeping instruments. These watches employed elements such as hydrogen and rubidium vapor to provide greater stability. This is how watches came into existence and changed the modern era of life.

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