page_title: Peter Henlein
section_title: Pomander Watch and Nuremberg eggs
hierarchical_section_title: Peter Henlein / Commemoration / Pomander Watch and Nuremberg eggs
caption_attribution_description: English: This is the earliest dated watch known. It is engraved on the bottom: "PHIL[IP]. MELA[NCHTHON]. GOTT. ALEIN. DIE. EHR[E]. 1530" (Philip Melanchthon, to God alone the glory, 1530). There are very few watches existing today that predate 1550; only two dated examples are known--this one from 1530 and another from 1548. There is no watchmaker's mark, although Nuremberg is considered the birthplace of spherical watches (called "Nuremberg Eggs"). A single winding kept it running for 12 to 16 hours, and it told time to within the nearest half hour. The perforations in the case permitted one to see the time without opening the watch. This watch was commissioned by the great German reformer and humanist Philip Melanchthon (1497-1560).
context_page_description: Peter Henlein, a locksmith and clockmaker of Nuremberg, Germany is the inventor of the world's first watch. He was the first craftsmen to make small ornamental watches which were often worn as pendants or attached to clothing, known as pomander watches, which are regarded as the first watches in history of timekeeping.
context_section_description: Henlein did not create the typical Nuremberg eggs - he crafted mainly portable pomander watches. Although they are associated with Henlein, and are a development of the watch-making tradition of Henlein's time, they thus become popular only several decades after his death.
  The German word Eierlein "little egg" is a corruption of a diminutive of Uhr (Middle Low German ûr, from Latin hora) "clock", Aeurlein or Ueurlein (Modern German Ührlein).  The association with "eggs" may arise with a 1571 translation of Rabelais by Johann Fischart in 1571; Fischart translated as Eierlein an instance of  Ueurlein in Rabelais. This form of the name may have played a part in inspiring the oval shape becoming popular in the 1580s.
  The former watchmaker and art collector Jürgen Abeler from the Wuppertaler Watch Museum concludes about pomander watches in his book: „So if any one of the preserved watches at all should be linked with the person of Peter Henlein, it can only be this watch in the pomander.“´
caption: Pomander Watch 1530 created by Peter Henlein. It once belonged to Philip Melanchthon and is now in the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore
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