The single-hand watch: why is it so intriguing?

The single-hand watch , outside the established order and defying time, intrigues with its originality. Stripped of 2 hands, it allows you to have a more global vision of time, less stressful and more soothing. Setting your eyes on a single-hand watch is like stopping time and realizing that there is no hurry.

The origin of the single-hand watch

As surprising as it may seem, reading a 24-hour watch using a single hand is a return to the origins and not a result of progress. The first mechanical clocks dating from the 14th century had dials divided into 24-hours and a single hand. The pace of life being much less hectic at that time, reading the time did not need to be as precise as possible. In addition, public clocks, often visible from church bell towers, had to be readable from a distance. This is why a single hand was enough to quickly read the time, without confusing the hour and minute hands (which did not yet exist anyway!). Jost Bürgi, a watchmaker and mathematician (among others) was the one who invented the minute hand in 1577. This new technology and the search for precision having taken precedence over the simpler aspect of the single hand, it then became increasingly rare. The same goes for 24-hour dials, which are gradually being replaced by 12-hour formats.

The important thing to remember is that for a long time, the single hand was the only way to tell the time. From the sundial of ancient times to the clock and the pocket watch, all initially only indicated the hours using a single hand.

24-hour watches, for their part, had regained their glory among trades where one was deprived of the sight of the sun as a point of reference. This was the case, in particular, of submariners, who used watches indicating day from night to differentiate every hour of the day.

Nowadays, we are seeing a return to the essentials and the desire to go against the grain in relation to the instantaneity of our consumption patterns and technological advances. The single-hand watch is finding a public seeking the serenity of observing a dial where time seems to flow more slowly, particularly on a 24-hour dial.

How does a single-hand watch work ?

As you will have understood, a single-hand watch is therefore a watch with a single hand that indicates hours and minutes simultaneously. They exist on both 12-hour and 24-hour dials. On a 24-hour watch, it will have the particularity of only going around the dial once .

Single-hand watches work in the same way as 3-hand watches. The rotation of the hand is dictated by the energy of the movement, whether it is quartz (battery-powered), manual mechanical or automatic (powered by the kinetic energy of the wrist).

The only thing that differs from a more classic 3-hand watch, apart from the 2 missing hands, is the scale of the indexes.

Don’t panic, we’ll explain it all to you just below!

 

How to read the time on a single-hand 24-hour watch ?

 

Reading a single-hand watch may leave you perplexed at first, but when you take a closer look, you'll understand that it's easier to read than a 3-hand watch! Of course, it takes some getting used to, but remember, the key word in this article is to calm your frenetic vision of time. So let's take a moment to explain how to read the time on these famous watches.

As previously mentioned, on a 24-hour format, the hand only goes around the dial once, following the classic pattern of a day made up of… 24 hours. It's already simpler in theory because you won't have to do a mini mental somersault to convert that famous 07:00 into 19:00 after a hard day's work.

Next, let's go back to the index scale. Between each segment indicating an hour, you will have graduations every 5, 10 or 15 minutes depending on the model of your watch. Most 24-hour watches display the 12-hour segment at the top of the dial so as not to destroy any notions acquired from a young age.

Here, we can see that each line on the dial is equivalent to 10 minutes. The daily time is displayed at a glance. As you may have noticed, reading the time to the nearest minute is almost impossible. We warned you that it's a different view of time, you'll have to get used to it, but you're no longer on the minute. And if you really have a train to catch, you still have the right to take a quick glance at your phone!
As for single-hand watches with a 12-hour dial, it is the same reading principle. The hand will just go around the dial twice like a more classic watch and the scale of the indexes will be more like 5 minutes.

 

Conclusion

Finally, the single-hand watch is of a simple complexity. Being at the origin of watchmaking, wearing it nowadays is a real return to the sources, to the time of a peaceful pace of life. It is a different vision that, somehow, makes you take your foot off the pedal a little and go back in time. So if every time you look at your watch, you have the impression of not having enough time, it is perhaps the sign that you need to switch to the single-hand!