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Pilot Watches
A pilot watch is a wristwatch with special features (compass, stopwatch, etc.), traditionally used by the pilots of aircraft. Although the wristwatch (first sold by Patek Phillipe Co. in the late 1880s) was originally a women's accessory, it was eventually found to be useful tool for pilots, and hence the pilot watch was born.
The first such use of the pilot watch was by the Brazilian aviation pioneer Alberto Santos-Dumont. While testing out his new aero-plane in the early 1900s, Dumont found his pilot watch necessary to keep track of time. He asked his friend Louis Cartier for help, and Cartier built him a leather bound wristwatch. Dumont used his popularity in Paris to popularize the pilot watch and sell it to other men.
Pilot watches gained more popularity in WWI, when officers began to realize that they were more convenient than pocket watches in battle. Also, because the pocket watch was more of a middle class item, the working class soldiers usually owned pilot watches, which they brought with them to their service. Artillery and infantry officers depended on these pilot watches as battles became more complicated, because attacks needed to be coordinated at precise moments.
Pilot watches were found to be needed in the air as much as on the ground: military pilots found them more convenient than pocket watches for the same reasons as Santos-Dumont had. Eventually, army contractors manufactured pilot watches en masse for both infantry soldiers and pilots. In WWII, a popular pilot watch of most American airmen was the A-11: it had a simple black face and clear white numbers for easy readability, and it met the aviator's basic needs.
After the war, the returning officers kept their pilot watches and wore them back home, popularizing them among the middle class. The middle class helped the item develop into more than a means of keeping time. The standards for pilot watches were raised, and they became much more advanced, including features like chronometers and slide rules. (Chronometers are clocks especially used in navigation, designed to have sufficient long-term accuracy and precision, while slide rules are mechanical calculators that can make rapid, approximate scientific and engineering calculations, such as time, distance and speed equations.)
The popularization of the pilot watch among the middle class also made it an accessory; companies designed impressive looking pilot watches out of stainless steel, leather, and mineral crystal, with showy gold and silver accents, elaborate faces covered in various numbers, rotating crowns, and numerous widgets all in one package |
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