Human beings had been measuring time even before 1500BC when the ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamians had invented portable sundials. But that was the first time that having time with you was so easy and accessible when Peter Henlein invented the pocket watch.

Those first watches immediately become more than timepieces. In those early days, handmade jewel-encrusted watches were symbols for nobles and kings.

But this suddenly changed in the early 1800’s when Eli Terry Sr, a US industrialist, put the watch into mass production and made the watch what Henry Ford did for the car manufacture company making it affordable for the simple Joe.

The watch technology continued to improve with quartz technology and the introduction of the battery power and even the Atomic Clock’s invention in 1967 had an impact. This clock that uses the oscillations of Cesium-133 atoms to make its time perfect was then adapted and developed until it can be made into a watch.

In 1970, all designs and improvements were done into the watch. LED, Digital, LCD and even calculator watches became available as Japanese companies compete over the market share.

The watch then became cheaper, functional and affordable and in 1998, 500 million watches were sold globally every year.

These days, watch technology has diverted to being green with solar-powered watches, touch screen technology and a variety of other technical features being added.

It is unavoidable then that the watch be added with MP3 and MP4. The arrival of flash-disk technology and the watch interface was really a perfect match and many electronic suppliers have done with making plastic watches and are now moving to high quality materials like steel and gold.