Walthem 14k Yellow Gold - White Enamel Dial - Yellow Gold Stretch Bracelet

Sale Price: $495.00

Waltham 14k yellow gold 29.5mm case. Waltham "Sapphire" manual wind movement. Perfect white enamel dial and yellow gold filled decorated period bracelet. Watch has been serviced and keeps excellent time.

This is an unusual and relatively rare watch, in this configuration. This watch started life as a ladies' pendant watch, but sometime after World War I was converted into a wristwatch.

American Dough Boys, as U.S. soldiers were known as,began to convert ladies' pendant watches into wrist watches during the war as a way of having a fast and easily accessible way to tell the time. They were tired of having to reach into their pockets or tunics to access their pocket watches, especially if they were on the run or if their hands were busy holding onto their rifles or other equipment.

They first tried converting their own pocket watches, but they found them to be to large and cumbersome, but the women's pendant watches were just the right size. Some even had a small type of metal grid made, sort of like the faceplate cover of an old fashioned diving helmet to protect the crystal and the dial.

Once the soldiers returned from the war, and other folks saw them wearing watches on their wrists, it no longer became a war-time fad, but a logical necessity; hence the birth of the functional wristwatch. (Although some might argue that the first wristwatch was made by Abraham Louis Breguet for Caroline Bonaparte in 1810, this one of a kind piece in its time was not practical nor affordable for the average person and therefore was not manufactured in quantity.) So from a ladies pendant watch and a little bit of war-time ingenuity, the first practical wristwatch was born.

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