The Most Important Watches in the World

William Anthony's "The Pearl Star"

Mechanical wristwatches (as opposed to battery-powered ones) offer us what sci-fi writer William Gibson called the "tamogotchi experience": the sense that we are wearing and tending to a living thing that whirrs and ticks on our wrist.

Throughout the years, these machines have kept the trains running on time and helped the Man in the Grey Flannel Suit make his two-martini lunch. Sadly, however, these gems are now frequently absent from our wrists thanks to those ubiquitous portable time-telling devices—laptops and cellphones. Watch expert John Biggs, who runs crunchgear.com and is the author of a forthcoming book about watches for Dial Press, offers an in-depth look at some of the most amazing watches from this century and beyond—including a hockey-puck-size watch that is one of the most complex mechanical devices ever made.

1. 1794 | William Anthony's "The Pearl Star"
Why it Matters: The Pearl Star is one of the first watches with expanding hands.

The Story: Attributed to William Anthony of London, this pocket watch has an oblong case with automatically extending hands. When the hands are at noon, for example, they are fully extended up to the top of the case. When they are at 9:15, they automatically shorten to fit without touching the sides of the case.

Perrin Freres "Wandering Hours"

2. 1800 | Perrin Freres "Wandering Hours"
Why it Matters: One of the first "digital" watches that used a unique system of hands to display the time.

The Story: The vision of a "digital" watch—meaning one that showed the hours in minutes using rotating numerals instead of hands—has always been an important pursuit in watchmaking. Perrin Freres of Switzerland created an amazing variation on this with the Wandering Hours in 1800. Three hands circled a central pivot and on the tip of each, four small hour numerals spin into place at the end of each hour. With the case closed, the watch looks like a fuel gauge showing minutes and hours but inside you find a riot of gears and hands.

The Rolex Oyster Perpetual

3. 1910 | The Rolex Oyster Perpetual
Why it Matters: The Rolex Oyster redefined where you could take a watch by making it waterproof.

The Story: Like most great innovations, the Rolex merges two simple technologies to create something that no one thought they needed but then became indispensible. The technology, the perpetual movement, was first conceived by Louis Perrelet in the 1750s and was perfected by Rolex. A small weight wound the watch when the wearer moved his or her arm, resulting in a watch that ran "perpetually" with no need for daily winding.

The next innovation was a crown that screwed down to protect the inside of the watch from water. They advertised the first model in 1910 by dunking the watches in aquariums in watch shops around the world. Rolex thus became synonymous with diving watches.

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