Tool Watches Past, Present and Future

Understanding watches as tools: their history, philosophy and what’s next.

Rolex Explorer in its element

While I’m sat writing this post, in the comfort of my own cozy, lamp-lit room, cup of tea an arm’s width away, my wrist is donning the modern iteration of the watch worn by the first people to summit Mount Everest. It’s as though my watch is tugging at my sleeve like an excitable toddler, urging me to get up and do something less civilized. So I will… 

And I’m back. I just took a short bus ride to Elie, an old fishing town in the East Neuk of Fife, Scotland. Beyond the town is the Elie Chain Walk, a half-kilometer of coastal scrambles aided by big metal chains drilled into the rock. It is leaps and bounds from Everest of course, but while undulating up-and-down the rocks and in-and-out of caves, I had the weird feeling that my trusty watch felt more at home here than it did indoors. So what gives?; what is it about a tool watch which makes it a tool, when these objects are no more than luxury items today? 

Chromalight 3-6-9, coastal cave edition

Thinking Historically: The Tool Watch is Older Than Rolex

To understand anything, it helps to first understand its history, and I believe commenters on the present debate, as of yet, don’t run the history books back far enough. 

Of course, Rolex, in the 1930’s, pioneered the ‘oyster’ case and the ‘perpetual’ movement (that’s a waterproof steel case and a timekeeping mechanism which powers itself with a rotor that moves with the wearer’s wrist). This gave birth to the tool-watch idea, and therefore the tool watch aesthetic - a plain steel case and bracelet housing a robust automatic movement.

However, while many associate this industrial form-follows-function aesthetic with early Rolex, I believe this kind of watch design started way earlier, with maritime chronometers. Imagine you’re on a ship in the 18th century looking for new riches overseas. How do you work out where you are in the middle of the Atlantic? Working out where you are laterally is fairly easy. Since the earth doesn’t spin from top-to-bottom, the stars are fixed each night, and their position can tell you your latitude. To work out longitude however, you need to account for the earth’s spin. What a watch does, and what timekeeping in general is, is keeping track of the earth’s spin; two revolutions of the hour hand of a clock is one spin of the earth on its axis. If you can know the difference in time (and therefore of the earth’s spin) between where your ship set off (say, London) and where you are now (in the middle of the Atlantic), you may know your longitudinal position. So, just bring a highly accurate pendulum clock with you!

Not so fast. A pendulum clock cannot work on a ship, since the swaying of the ship interferes with the pendulum’s swing. So how can you keep track of your home-time at sea? Such is a job for a clock that is highly accurate while shock and water resistant at the same time. 

In the mid 18th century, John Harrison invented such a device - the marine chronometer. A small clock / large pocket watch; strong, dependable and highly accurate. These watches are therefore quite sparse in term of design, with smooth-edged cases in non-precious metals and highly legible dials. Voila! - the tool watch look.

John Harrison’s Final Marine Chronometer (H5) - sciencemuseum.org.uk

This is also why modern Rolex dials reads ‘oyster, perpetual, chronometer’. The chronometer accolade simply means these watches are tested for their acute accuracy by an independent body, usually an observatory, and this came from the marine chronometer.

As for the tool-watch aesthetic, therefore, the link between the Rolex Submariners and Omega Speedmasters today goes back to the maritime chronometer, and it’s a link mediated by Abraham Louis Breguet.

Breguet, famed for his work on the tourbillon and automatic movement (which were then called ‘perpetuelles’ - note that Rolex has trademarked ‘perpetuel’ to describe the same thing) started making ‘pocket chronometers’ early in his career. These were bare-bones pocket watches made purely to keep good time; no bells or whistles, noting ornate, no luxury, just a tool for a job. As the great George Daniels described them:

“ These watches… are intended as precision timekeepers. They have no complications and all have the chronometer escapement. They are a convenient way of carrying the exact time from one place to another, for instance, on-board a ship” - George Daniels, The Art of Breguet (p. 73)

Evidently, the idea of a tool watch came far earlier than Rolex, and even before Switzerland became the watchmaking capital of the world. It was in fact the early ‘deck watches’ that are the grandparents of the rugged waterproof watch; the diving watch, the pilot’s watch… and so on. 

Thinking Philosophically: From H1 to the Garmin Forerunner 

We have come to understand the tool watch better by looking back in time, but to really really understand something, it helps to start thinking philosophically. 

The tool watch has a functional definition. Insofar as a knife is a knife because it cuts, the tool watch is a tool so long as it is a device made for a function - maritime navigation, diving, flying… But now our horological needs are fulfilled by atomic clocks in satellites linked to our computers and phones. Since we no longer buy mechanical watches out of necessity, but out of desire, is the iPhone the last iteration of the tool-watch?

An assortment of runners’ smartwatches

Maybe not, since I might not use my phone for a single specific job like colonial sailors would’ve used Harrison’s clocks. But, I do use my Garmin watch for running, and only for running. Given the history of the tool-watch, I’d say the activity-tracking GPS smart watch is the next iteration of of the tool watch.

Thinking Ahead: Smart Clasps

So where does this leave a Rolex Submariner, Explorer, GMT, Omega Seamaster or Speedmaster; modern chronometers built for purpose but not bought out of necessity? How may we have both the now romantic aesthetic of a steel tool watch, with the necessity and function of a smart watch used by mountaineers, trail-runners and hikers? How can we have the mechanical dive-watch and the dive computer in one?

An emerging idea: a mechanical tool watch with a steel case and bracelet, only the clasp has all the smartwatch trimmings built-in: heart rate, GPS, sleep tracker… the lot. Maybe the clasp doesn’t even have a screen, only the relevant sensors and the information connects to your phone. And, when technology advances and the clasp becomes out of date, you only swap-out the clasp, but not the trusty mechanical head of the watch.