Design tools for measure to the time and personel watches

The earliest clocks were sundials which were first used in Egypt and Mezopotamia around 1300 BC. The sundials is a type of clock which has been widely used over tousends of years. Such clocks make use of the varying length of shadows cast at different times of day by a horizontal bar or an upright post know as a gnomon on to a scale showing the hours.Horology or the science of measuring time, made a leap forward with the discovery of mechanical clocks,which was one of the great turning points in history. Over subsequent centuries clock makers and scientists sought improve the accuracy of clock mechanisms and developed clocks of many different types.From the thirteenth century onwards mechanical clocks became a feature of the facades of toweers, cathedraşs, plalaces and other religious and secular buildings in Europe above all in England, Germany, France and Italy. The large weight driven which served both a functional and decorative purpose were supplanted in the fifteenth century by spring drriven clocks. This new mechanism alowed clocks of far smaller size to be made so that the rich could have portable clocks in their homes and not long after wards the first pocket watches known as Nuremberg eggs, became fashionable. Early pocket watches which were large and heavy compared to today?s watches were enclosed in cases.Early mechanical clocks had neither dials nor hour and minute hands, but only striking mechanisms. The first dial marked with hours were not fixed rotated against a pointer. From the seconds half of the fourteenth century the first fixed dials appeared. They had moving hour and minute hands, and were divided into twenty four hours. Developments in industrial production and hence in international trade during the sixteenth and seventeenth centruies meant that accurate timing was of increasing importance in daily life and soon second hands were added to the hour and minute hands.One of the most important innovations in time measurement occured in the seventeeth century with the application of the pendulum to time pieces. Galileo?s discovery that the time taken by each oscillation of a pendulum depended only the lenght was eventually applied by to clocks, enabling time to be measured with the accuracy required by second hands. Longcase pendulum clocks came into widespread use during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.Wrist watches, which could be consulted at a glance whatever the user was wearing awkward circumstances he or she happened to be in hand the advantage of practicality over pocket watches and came into increasingly wide use towards the end of the nineteenth century.With the twentieth century, the role of table, brecket, mantel and longcase clocks as decorative furnishing elements began to diminish.Over the past few years people have increasingly started to look at watches as more than just means of telling the time. The trend for men to wear a watch as a fashion accessory has brought new interest to both contemporary and vintage watches by leading makers such as Rolex, Patek Philippe and Audemars Piguet.Many of these firms began as makers of pocket watches in the 19th century. Developments in technology and the incresing skills of the watchmakers, enabled them to produce increasingly complex movements.The number of collectors have fine watches is growing as more people appreciate the complexity of the mechanisms, the accuracy of the time keeping, the many additional functions they contain from alarms to perpetual calandars and the quality of the workmanship. On top of this watches remain, for many men, the only piece of jewellery it is acceptable to wear.While very affordable, mass-produduced watches have become the ubiquitous, the established, prestigious brands continue to produce handmade watches of exceptional quality. It is these watches which continue to catch the imigination today: made to the highest standarts of craftsmanship and from the best materials they are precision instruments we use on a daily basis.