APRIL 2020 businesstraveller.comWATCHE S
60 W
hen you think about it, there
are plenty of logical reasons
for a watch to be round. The
mechanics inside a movement
operate in circles, from the
unwinding mainspring that
drives the watch to the wheels
and gears that translate that energ y into regular, controlled
motion. It’s easiest to read the time on a circular dial, with
every point equidistant from the centre, and at a deeper,
more fundamental level, the building blocks of our system
of measuring time are all approximately circular: the
rotation of the earth on its axis around the sun, and that
of the moon around the earth.
There are other practical reasons, too – as watches were
developed in the 1930s and ’40s to be more durable and
hard-wearing, round cases found favour partly because
they were easier to water-proof, usually by screwing the
back into the circular case, and when watches capable of
surviving hundreds of metres underwater were required,
round cases were better able to deal with the pressure.
Around 80 per cent of watches sold are round, which
bears out its common-sense appeal. But what of the other
20 per cent? The first purpose-built wristwatches were
square, or more typically rectangular (starting with the
Cartier Santos-Dumont in 1904) and have retained
their allure for more than a century. Look at the cult
appeal of a Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso or a Tag Heuer
Monaco: both celebrated designs with well-known
watch-geek stories – the Reverso for its arcane, flippable
case developed for polo players, and the Monaco for
its association with actor Steve McQueen and as the
first square shape watch to be water-resistant.WORDS CHRIS HALL
More commonly marketed to women,
are we about to see a resurgence of
square watches for men? If so then
Longines is ahead of the curveSQUARE
Hip to be