History of the single-hand watch

A Brief History of Time

For many people, the rat race, in which a "normal" watch with minutes and seconds hands makes us rush, is taken for granted. Because we are used to measuring time with hour, minute and second hands, we have formed a firmly established relationship with time. If we go back a few thousand years, we can quickly tell that the way we go about with (this jars a bit. Could you say “interact with time” or “perceive time”?) time is unique and very relative.

 

The moment that humans began to perceive time as a phenomenon is still unclear. Early discoveries prove that the first sundials were made around 6000 years ago – of course with only one hand – and water clocks roughly 500 years later. The time it took a certain amount of water to flow through a small hole became used as a measurement for time.  Grains or sand were also used instead of water. The trusty hour glass has stayed with us as a useful aid when boiling eggs.

Original form of time measurement

The most natural and most basic form of time measurement seems to be the single-hand clock. That makes a MeisterSinger watch a true "Ur Uhr" - or 'primordial watch' - among all watches. The sundial, which only has one hand, has been the role model for all mechanical clocks. The multi-hand technique only started with the increasing industrialisation and a greater dependence on time. Thus it is obvious that the first clock makers in the late Middle Ages made their mechanic clockwork with just a single hand. The minute and second hands came much later and didn’t reach a break-through until the mid 18^th century when industrialisation made it necessary to measure the factory workers’ working hours and the scientists needed a timekeeper for research and development with which they could also measure seconds.

But let’s go back to the beginning: When Peter Henlein, a blacksmith from Nuremberg, sold the first portable cog clocks in the late Middle Ages, they were a sensation even though the time shown was extremely inaccurate. Peter Henlein could have been a true "MeisterSinger", as the guild of blacksmiths also took part in the traditional Meistersinger competitions at the time.

 

The name MeisterSinger is a reference to the period when time measurement began.
Together with the fermata, the pause symbol in music characterises the roots of MeisterSinger’s product philosophy.

Constraints of time measurement

 

In his cultural history of the clock, the American Lewis Mumford wrote in 1934: “The clock, not the steam engine, is the machine which shaped the industrial age the most.” Although the development of both "machines" greatly depended on each other, the concept of "time" only had to be reconsidered in light of industrialisation. The minute and second hands were born almost simultaneously in the 17th Century. It was an innovation that changed the look of the clock. Time was no longer a specific point, but an angle between moving rods.

Time measurement as we know it today and take for granted, is forces us into obligation constraints. With its single-hand watches, MeisterSinger corrects parts of this development, not by waiving the need for accuracy, but by constantly radiating the balance of the watch.

If we are honest, we realise that a minute by minute measurement of time is not actually necessary. Or when was the last time someone told you that you were 27 minutes and 43 seconds too late?