Pocket watches (Atrophy)
A pocket watch from the late 19th century
In the 19th century, mechanical timekeepers gained great popularity in the United States. New technologies like railroads, steam ships, and telegraph cables made it increasingly necessary to measure time precisely. On top of that, gas light made the daily life less dependent on sunrise and sunset. Thus, the population became more time conscious and time references of previous centuries like God, the sun, or the stars became finally outdated. On the contrary, it became more appropriate to refer to “railroad time” or “factory time”. In the first decades of the 19th century, cheap clocks that can be hung on walls or put on shelves were sold in large numbers. From 1840 on, pocket watches were offered in large numbers, many of them imported from Europe. Their number further increased in the 1860 due to the perfection of machine-made watches. Moreover, more and more pocket watches were produced in the United States, especially after the end of the Civil War in 1865. In the 1880s, U.S. and Swiss watch manufacturers were even fighting a trade war in which both tried to convince American customers of their products. In fact, American-made Waltham watches won trade competitions, e.g. at the world’s fairs of the time. Watches were one of the first American-made products that were superior to European-made consumer goods.[1]
Source:
[1] McCrossen, Alexis. “The ‘Very Delicate Construction’ of Pocket Watches and Time Consciousness in the Nineteenth-Century United States.” (Winterthur Portfolio, vol. 44, no. 1, 2010, 1-30, www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/651538?read-now=1&seq=8#page_scan_tab_contents. Accessed 10 Oct. 2019) 8-13.
Image:
Pierre-Auguste Renoir: La Loge. 1874. https://1tq45j21k9qr27g1703pgsja-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/renoir-1280x640.jpg