Mens Vintage Watches

Although the first wristwatch, made in 1868 by Patek Philippe, was essentially a timekeeping-enabled piece of jewelry designed for women, after World War I wristwatches became a popular fashion accessory for men, too. To win over female buyers, wristwatch manufacturers typically touted the high style of their products. Men were a different audience, responding to appeals about a given wristwatch’s technological sophistication and functional characteristics. Indeed, the first wristwatches marketed to men came wrapped in the legend of airplane pilot Santos Dumont, who, in 1904, asked his friend Louis Cartier to make him a watch he could strap to his wrist—as a pilot, Dumont simply could not spare a hand to look at his trusty pocket watch. That was the specific problem solved by Cartier’s Santos wristwatch. Before long, Omega, Rolex, and other manufacturers were producing their own problem-solving wristwatches for men. Once the hands-free conundrum was solved, wristwatch problems got more complicated—literally. That’s because the word for a feature on a watch other than showing the time is called a “complication.” One of the first complications added to watches was a chronograph, which allowed users to mark time intervals in a way that’s similar to a stopwatch. Innovator Patek Philippe had patented such a complication in 1902, and by 1916 the Swiss watchmaker had introduced its first complicated wristwatch, which featured a five-minute repeater. Ironically, this Patek Philippe watch was also produced for ladies, as was a 1913 chronograph by another Swiss watchmaker, Heuer. The delay on the part of watchmakers to roll out new features for men suggests how wedded men were to their pocket watches, but after World War I, men’s wristwatches became more common. For example, in 1923, Breitling, which was a fierce competitor of Heuer, offered its male customers the first chronograph with an independent pushpiece, making its simpler to start the complication and return it to zero. Breitling added a second pushpiece in 1934, improving the wristwatch’s functionality for professional and military pilots, all of whom at the time were men. Vacheron Constantin also made famous chronographs for men, such as the George V Royal Presentation Aviator’s Chronograph, one of which was given to Admiral Byrd after his 1926 flight to the North Pole. Another famous aviator to wear a chronograph was Howard Hughes, who had a Longines chronograph strapped to his wrist in 1938 when he broke the speed record for a flight around the world. Even more far flung was the journey taken by an Omega Speedmaster, which accompanied Neil Armstrong for a walk on the moon on July 21, 1969. Another category of vintage wristwatch mostly marketed to men was the dive watch, although as with the chronograph, the precursor to the first diving wristwatch was made famous by a woman. The wristwatch was the Rolex Oyster, introduced in 1926, and the woman who made it famous was Mercedes Gleitze, who wore the waterproof timepiece in 1927 when she became the first British woman to swim the English Channel. A proper dive watch followed in 1932, the Omega Marine, while Panerai made dive watches for the Italian Navy. Other manufacturers to produce dive wristwatches for men included Jaeger-LeCoultre, which released its Geophysic Chronometer and several other dive wristwatches in the late 1950s; IWC, whose water-resistant Aquatimer made its debut in 1967; and Doxa, which came out with its Sub 300T in the 1960s. Rolex also stayed in the dive-watch game, offering what’s become one of the most collectible vintage military dive wristwatches, the Rolex 5517 Submariner, in the 1970s. But perhaps the most alpha-male-masculine wristwatch of them all is an LED digital wristwatch from 1973. It’s not the first LED wristwatch—that would be the Synchronar, which appeared in 1972 and featured red LEDs powered by a NiCad battery—or even the highly collectible Pulsar-P1, which was introduced around the same time by the Hamilton Watch Company. No, the quintessential men’s wristwatch may just be the Pulsar P2, which is not rare as many were made but does have the distinction of being worn by Roger Moore in the 1973 James Bond film, “Live and Let Die.”