How The Left Wrist Became The Right Wrist For Watches
In European newspapers, much has been written about strap watches in military equipment. This has garnered a lot of attention since modern warfare has demonstrated the necessity of knowing the time". There is an explanation of how the wristwatch evolved quickly, and the story concludes, "Until recently, watch bracelets were more or less thought of as a joke.". Vaudeville actors and moving-picture actors have used it as a 'silly-ass fad'.
But now, since preparedness has become the watchword and watches have become an essential part of soldiers' equipment, the status of the wristwatch is changing. Now they are willing to concede the value of a bracelet watch for general outdoor activities, but they are not yet at the point where they can consistently adapt it for all occasions after poking fun.
What happened next? Next, you know what happened. Pocket watches went into oblivion, except as an object of fascination for a few, and wristwatches became the ubiquitous and universal tool for timekeeping on the go. Most of the time, it was worn on the left wrist.
At least one reason for the popularity of left wrist watches is pretty simple: handedness and handwriting.
It was not uncommon, once upon a time, that left-handed students would be forced to write with the right hand once they started school (the Soviet school system, for instance, enforced this uniformly). There are many reasons for this, including cultural bias against lefties and the fact that many tools and appliances are designed based on the assumption that the right hand is the right hand. One example is a mechanical can-opener.
The practical reason for requiring right-handedness has to do with writing.
The dip pen and fountain pen, which were the standard for correspondence for much of the 20th century, use slow-drying liquid ink that will smear if your pen is in your left hand and you're writing left to right. It wasn't until Lazlo Biro invented the ball-point pen, which was popularized by the success of the Reynolds ball-point pen, that this problem became non-existent.
The Reynolds became available at Gimbels in New York in the winter of 1945 (in the film The Godfather, Michael Corleone's girlfriend Kay Adams is shown buying one for Tom Hagen in that year). It used a dry, oil-based ink that was far less likely to smear, and so ball-point pens have since existed.
Montblanc fountain pen, center and upper right; Montblanc ballpoint pen, lower left. Hamburg, Montblanc House.
Right-wingers, however, were not affected by this. If you write with your right hand, your left wrist is the natural place to keep your watch out of harm's way.
Despite the fact that 90% of the general population uses their right hand more often than their left, even when the fountain pen gave way to the ballpoint, it still made more sense for righties to wear left-handed watches.
(There were still right-handed watch wearers, for example; the Command Module pilot for Apollo 11 wore his watch on his right wrist).
Even today, wearing a watch on the left wrist is not universal, and a totally informal, statistically insignificant survey of my colleagues at HODINKEE provided some interesting results.
My wife has always worn her ring on her right hand, not left-handed. My father wears his on the right but is left-handed."
My watch is worn on my right wrist for two reasons: first, I am left-handed so I cannot drag it across desks as I write or risk hitting it. Second, it keeps the crown up-arm so there is less exposure to water when I wash my hands."
As a left-handed person, I wear my watch on my left because I have been too conformed to societal norms.
My dad wore his on his left wrist when I was a kid, so I copied him. Wearing it on my right wrist feels wrong."
"I write left-handed but still wear left because I hardly write anymore!"
In addition, many of my classmates in watchmaking school were left-handed, and we all wore our watches on the right wrist."
The trend of writing by hand has largely been replaced by typing (mostly with your thumbs), and this makes me wonder if people will increasingly wear watches on the right wrist, for reasons of aesthetics and comfort. Writing by hand takes away much of the incentive to wear a watch, at least for shiftless knowledge-workers who don't actually produce anything. (My sons love to tell me I "type for a living.".)
An extreme meta move would be to wear a watch with the crown on the left, designed to be worn on the right wrist, on the left wrist - an exercise in deliberate perversity that seems perfectly attuned to these increasingly surreal times.
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