History of watches.

Our civilization has been always trying to measure time fractions as a registration of a constant activity or as a silent calm. Since our origins, humans have been trying to measure time to organize their lives and destination. Ancient civilizations measure time according to the alternation between day and night, as well as Moon cicles. Little by little our ancenstros created instrument to divide time by shadows with increasing accuracy. Clocks were starting to operate. At first Sundials told the time thanks to the Sun movement on a flat surface with a clock type indicator. Arqueologists have discovered that Chinese used timepieces 3.000 years before Christ as well as Egypcians and Incas do. These first timepieces do not work during the night or in cloudy days or even in twilight or dawn. Also clock type indicators should be modified depending of the earth latitudes when the sun beams inclination was different. This was not a very secure way of measuring time owing to day duration was different period of the year. Clepsydras appeared at that time in Babylon ad Egypt first and later in Greece and Rome, they were a kind of a vessel of water, having a small hole in the bottom, so that the liquid dripped out drop by drope. As the level within the jar was lowered, it showed the time upon a scale. Romans used this kind of timepieces in the Judgements to control the development of the hearings. A similar system but with marked candles was using during the night. In the III century BC, sand timepieces appeared with two vessels connected by a narrow tube. Have you ever seen these small sand timepieces which were famous to measure minutes while talking by phone? Sure you have. In the past sand timepieces were bigger and could measure the time of one day. Anyway time passed until the machines started to be important in society. At the very begining of the VIII century the italian Pacífico created one timepiece which worked by means of counterweights and was given to the king Pepin the short by the Pope Paulo I. These were the first steps. In 1.300 these mechanisms were very common in some European churches. The oldest clock is in the Cathedral of Salisbury,England which was installed in 1386. These kind of timepieces became more efficient with the discovering of the Pendulum Law created by Galileo Galilei 1600. Thanks to this discovering, the Duch mathematician and phisycist Christiaan Huygens would create the first timepiece with pendulum in 1657 in a wall clock. Some time later, one hundred years before, in the German city of Nüremberg the first wound clocks were created, these timepieces were portable ones. Ginebra was very famous as timepiece-making center. The Calvinistic legislation in this city prevented the manufacturing of “crosses, chalices and other religious instruments”, so these craftsmen lost their French and natives of Savoy customers. So, they decided to create boxes for timepieces mechanism, working with timepiece-makers. At the beginning of the XVII century, the timepiece-making in Geneve was very important and it went beyond the frontiers to make exhibitions in Lyon and Francfort fairs. The advance in timepiece-making had been very important but it was necessary to solve problems such as pices wear and inaccuracy in time measurement. Nicolas Faccio could modify this aspect in 1704. He used rubies and aspires as pivots in the timepieces mechanism. This pieces harshness reduced the mistakes due to friction and wear. This meant an important improvement in the timepiece-making industry. Nowadays, we have a wide range of timepieces types and qualities: electrical, timers, alarm clocks, wrist timepieces, digital, atomic, etc.. Wrist timepieces were created in 1904 by the Suitzerland timepiecemaker Hans Wildsorf from Rolex.: Only six years later they created the first wrist timer. Atomic timepieces, started to be created in 1949 being one of the pacific application of the nuclear energy. Finally, we want to remark that the use of quartz in timepieces started in Beil Laboratories, from 1980 with a clock type indicador where the time could be seen through a display to see the time just with a look. From that moment a long way has been walked.