Watch Case & Cases

NEW YORK

New York is an American luxury sportswear brand designed for today’s confident, sophisticated and style-savvy woman. From suiting separates to classic blazers and flirty dresses, Anne Klein creates clothing and accessories that can be worn in a multitude of ways allowing women to create a fashionable wardrobe by adding key pieces each season.

The flagship New York store opened in February 2002, in New York’s Soho district . The line is carried at Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue, Bloomingdale’s, Harvey Nichols (UK) and other fine department and specialty stores in the U.S. and abroad.

A full range of New York accessories include belts, coats, eyewear, footwear, handbags, hosiery, luggage, scarves, small leather accessories, swimwear, sunglasses, umbrellas and watches.

The first European precision instrument exported to Asia was a clock

The first mechanical clocks were mostly made by blacksmiths, locksmiths or cannon-makers, who had the watch case making experience in working with metal. These artisans were mainly to be found in the Netherlands, Italy and France. It is therefore no surprise that the first precision instrument exported to Asia from Europe was a clock. It was recorded as early as 1338 in the freight documents of a Venetian ship bound for Delhi.

Luxury for a select few from a single craftsman

In those days, and throughout the years until early this century, a clock was usually the achievement of a single individual. During the 17th century, metalworkers specialized in clock manufacturing organized themselves into guilds. This gave rise to clock case-making centers in Augsburg, Nuremberg, the French towns of Blois and Lyon and, later on, Paris, London and Geneva. At first they produced large-scale public clocks such as the one at Cluny Monastery or the famous astronomical clock at Strasbourg Cathedral. Later on came the spring-driven, more transportable clocks invented in the 15th century, followed by the first precision pendulum clocks dating from around 1660. But these could only be afforded by the nobility, rich middle classes or clergy. The same was true of the expensive early pocket watches, whose invention is ascribed to the Nuremberg master craftsman Peter Henlein in 1554 - though other historians believe that pocket watches already existed in the early 16th century. As a result, it was the demand from royal courts, nobility and prosperous burghers that determined where clocks and watches were produced.

Quartz Revolution:

Precision has always been the greatest challenge in making timepieces. Quartz crystals were long known to offer highly reliable frequency standards. This led to the first Quartz clock in the late 1920s which was considered the most accurate time keeping device yet developed.

Still, the technology to allow use of Quartz crystals in wristwatches had to await invention of the integrated circuit in 1970. This enabled a Swiss group to manufacture the first commercially available Quartz watch, the Beta 21. The Swiss, however, lacked the industrial means for large scale production and were reluctant to pursue a technology that could crush Swiss dominance in less precise mechanical watches.

In short order, commercially viable production of Quartz watches fell to the Japanese who came to market with the first analog Quartz watch. By 1971 Seiko was offering Quartz crystal wristwatches accurate to within five seconds a month or a minute a year. America's Hamilton Watch Company immediately followed with the Pulsar and its digital (LED) readout.