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The Watch Face: Numerals
Numerals are not essential for a watch dial, time may be indicated by hour markers, a single mark at 12, or nothing at all, with only the relative position of the hands as guidance, but given that so many watches carry numerals on their dial, let us delve into the story of their development.
Numbers from Scratch
The first marks to indicate quantity were tallies, made by scratching or notching wood, bone, stone or some other durable substance. They date back at least 30,000 years but cannot be considered as numerals as each mark has no different meaning to the next, only the total has significance. The first true numerals come from the Sumerians, located in modern-day Iraq. While their symbols, either archaic or cuneiform have not survived to grace our dials, an important part of their mathematics has – in the form of their sexagesimal number system. Based on the 60, the Sumerian, and later Babylonian form of counting is why we have 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour and 360 degrees in a circle.
What have the Romans ever done for us?
The earliest form of numerals found on watch dials is Roman, dating from the around the 9th century BC. There are two theories as to their origin, one is that they are a development of the old tally marks, the other that they are from counting on fingers, hence their grouping into 5s. Despite the difficulty in using them for arithmetic, Roman numerals remained in wide use until the 15th century. Imparting a certain classicism to a dial, Roman numerals are still a popular choice. A well-known oddity concerning their use on dials is the form of the number 4, usually written as IV but most commonly found on watch and clock dials as IIII.
Indian Origins
Arabic numerals are the most widely used around the world, even in countries which do not use a conventional alphabet. Their success is largely due to the decimal mathematics that they support but their origin is not Islamic, but Hindu. The source of these numbers, the Brahmi numerals, goes back to around 300 BC but these were not the decimal, positional numbers that we now know, those did not evolve until 400 AD. The invention of zero by Brahmagupta in 628AD was a pivotal development in mathematics and gave the Hindu number system its power and durability. Hindu numbers naturally drifted westwards along the Silk Road, but their adoption was super-charged by the work of scholars such as Al-Khwarizmi and Al-Kindi who spread them throughout the Arab world. The style and formation of the numerals developed into two distinct styles, the Arabic numerals that we know and use today, or ‘Western Arabic Numerals’ and the ones used in modern Arabic script or ‘Eastern Arabic Numerals’.
Eastern Arabic numerals, or ‘Hindi’ numerals as they are sometimes known have made something of a comeback in recent years as watchmakers cater for specific market tastes, most notably the Rolex ref. M228206-0025 platinum Day-Date from 2016. With this watch Rolex is referencing older Day-Date models produced from the late 1950s to the end of the 1970s with first the day in Arabic script, then the date and finally the hour markers too. Their presence on earlier watches is very rare, although the chevron shaped markers found on pocket watches produced for the Turkish (Ottoman) market are, in fact, highly stylised versions of Eastern Arabic numerals.
Other Alphabets
There are many more numerals in use around the world than just Arabic and Roman, but rarely do any make it to a watch dial. The reason is two-fold, the historic production of watches has been centred in Western Europe where these two dominate and by the time watchmaking spread to other regions, Arabic numerals had been adopted for general use locally.
Cyrillic numbers were largely abandoned in 18th Russia under the reforms of Peter the Great and while Cyrillics can be found on more modern Russian-made watches, they are far more likely to be letters rather than numbers, spelling out a patriotic message.
Arabic numerals reached both China and Japan in advance of watchmaking although the dials of Bovet’s watches, one of the first Swiss brands to target the Chinese market, usually featured Roman numerals. Bovet was one of the few makers to use Chinese characters as hour markers, but these formed a small portion of their output. In common with Rolex, a number of modern brands have produced dials with Hanzi and Kanji dials, for China and Japan. These tend to be limited editions to celebrate cultural events rather than regular production pieces. Nomos produced a Kanji version of their Tangente for Japan’s Cultural Day, and both Bovet and Graham have released Hanzi dial models.