Wasted Time/The Emergence of a Throwaway Culture Using the Example of Clocks and Watches

The following text was written by Thomas Schütz, Researcher at the University of Stuttgart, and reflects his presentation at our Closing Conference, “Repairing Technology – Fixing Society?” from 13-14 October 2022 in Luxemburg.

The following presents the results of a finished research project about the German clock and watch industries in both German states in the second half of the 20th century. In accordance with the source base, this will therefore be a local case study of a global phenomenon: the throwaway culture of consumer goods in the case of a specific technical artifact.

Because of their everyday use, clocks and watches may appear to represent a negligible quantity in relation to questions of industrial society, environmental protection or the sustainability of consumption. However, a close look at the history of their production, their trade, and not least their use can provide an insight into the multi-layered social and cultural dependencies of technical change and scientific progress and their societal implications.

The symbolic connotation of wrist and pocket watches as masculine jewelry given as group-specific gifts in “rites de passage” situations in the sense of van Gennep implies that these artifacts should be as valuable, precise, and durable as possible. In the course of industrialization and Fordist mass production, in which the serial production of timepieces has been of central importance, there has been a democratization and ultimately a massification of the ownership of watches. Since the end of the 19th century at the latest, watches were developed that were designed as disposable items. However, for a long time these products represented a niche market with special distribution channels. From the perspective of watchmakers, a group of technical experts who had a high degree of organization and had long played a key part in the sale and maintenance of watches, such disposable products were acceptable only in specific settings. This attitude changed more quickly in the United States, and gradually in Europe only after the end of the Second World War. However, it is important to note that the special economic conditions in the GDR meant that the availability and practice of repairing clocks and watches could not depend solely on consumer expectations.

From the manufacturers’ perspective, there were, however, a number of aspects that made repair impossible or at least economically unviable:

Very cheap pieces due to inferior materials and manufacturing

Pieces that were produced for peripheral markets, where the corresponding infrastructure was lacking (Global South)

Innovative products that exceeded the capabilities of the ordinary watchmaker

Products whose reparability was made impossible by technical devices

In the clock and watch industries of industrialized nations, a fundamental crisis emerged in the 1970s, caused by the replacement of metal by plastic as the main material processed, the growing importance of electronic clock generators and the internationalization of value chains.

Parallel to these developments, the dominant design of watches and the “rationality fiction” of consumers also changed, as these timepieces became disposable products. This can be illustrated by looking at the development from early examples of disposable pocket watches produced from the late 19th century up to Swatch watches – serially produced artifacts which were not designed to be opened by a watchmaker because of the encapsulation of the case. Maintenance or repair was thus not impossible but it was uneconomical and furthermore required knowledge that was not taught in watchmaker training.

Disposable products have a long tradition in the case of clocks and watches; the use of brass watch springs date back to the 19th century and was common in American one-dollar watches and their German counterparts, made primarily in Thuringia. Since this component was central to both the price and the life of the products, it is clear that right at the onset of industrial production there were already artifacts that were not designed to be repaired and thus were not suitable for transmission over generations or the second-hand market.

The company Gebrüder Thiel in Ruhla/Thuringia produced pin lever watches with interchangeable parts starting in 1892 with the “Fearless” model; these were relatively inaccurate watches with a short running reserve. Initially, this was a watch caliber whose case was not screwed on but instead was firmly encapsulated by means of brass lugs. It could therefore not be easily opened by a watchmaker for maintenance or repair. This innovation caused an outcry in the trade press, prompting Thiel to return to the established screw-down case technology despite the higher production costs. Nevertheless, manufacturers were keen to imitate higher-quality products, at least in terms of design. At this stage, non-repairable watches were regarded as inferior substitutes by consumers as well as technical and economic experts. This was reflected, for example, in the pejorative nomenclature “Ruhla potato”.

It would take a change in market structure, a structural crisis and the quartz revolution to establish a new “rationality fiction” among consumers with the Swiss Swatch watch and its epigones. The success of this group of artifacts presented new challenges to the established watch industry when it was launched in 1983, not least thanks to considerable expenditure on advertising and because this marketing, much like the product itself at this time, was accepted by consumers worldwide. The basic marketing concept characterized it as an “emotional consumer good” and wanted this interpretation to be distinct from the watch as a mere consumer good or a branded product. To this end the concept of “message” was utilized, first in internal discourse and then in retrospective reflection. “We are not just offering people a style. We are offering them a message.” Swatch production was designed for an annual output of one million units. As a disposable product designed not to be repaired, it was initially viewed rather skeptically by expert groups in both industry and academia. Despite this assessment, the watch became a worldwide sales success. Although the product by no means reached all consumers, as a hedonistic symbol of unbridled consumption it was inconceivable for many social groups of the 1980s and 1990s to wear a Swatch. The case of the Swatch could not be opened either. Like many contemporary electrical devices, it was decided to seal it completely in plastic. A hundred years after the Fearless, however, the network of actors embedding the artifact had changed to such an extent that this aspect remained a footnote at best. Even if wrist watches serve as a role model in this context, comparable examples could be cited for clocks.

In Edgerton’s sense, this change in the dominant design did not mean that mechanical technology had disappeared, but rather that a niche market had established itself that appealed primarily to a more affluent audience and which, for established production sites such as Schrammberg in the Black Forest or Glashütte in Saxony, also meant economically successful further development of the industry – albeit under different auspices and on a considerably more modest scale. In relation to the question of social and cultural implications investigated here, the case study can be used to trace the typical contemporary phenomena of mass consumption, globalization and, not least, the associated negative consequences for the environment. Even though quartz wrist watches are small, they are made of plastics and composites that are difficult to degrade, and their mass production is associated with the corresponding burdens and risks. Due to the growing capacity, this has also become a problem area of increasing relevance over time.

In terms of the structure of repair practices, these developments had different consequences: in East and West Germany, for example, there was a reduction in the number of traditional watchmaking businesses, albeit for different reasons. In the 1960s and 1970s, there were also brief tendencies to centralize repair operations, but in the GDR this was a failed attempt to meet an unsatisfiable demand, while in the West it was primarily Timex watches that were sent to the factory in Pforzheim in the event of a warranty claim. Watchmakers expanded their product range in order to increase their competitiveness through diversification. In the West, they tended to expand to include jewelry, whereas in the East they turned to eyewear. And finally, many watchmakers lost their independence and joined retail chains.

From the perspective of the history of technology, the developments only briefly touched upon here are of particular interest, since various actor-group-specific relevancies of attributions of meaning and symbolic charges of technical artifacts can be documented here over the course of time. In the 1980s, wearing a repaired and potentially inherited mechanical wrist watch could be an expression of a rejection of “Konsumterror”, or the pressure to consume. At the same time, the self-perception of this attitude as individual, progressive and, at least in part, also resistant means that its niche existence can only be explained against the backdrop of the general trend and that it can thus ultimately be seen merely as a nucleus for the resolution of the wider problems resulting from industrial mass production.