The invention and popularization of quartz watches in the early 1970s brought the traditional watchmaking industry on the brink of extinction. That's all you really need to know about "luxury timepieces."
Rolex is often mistakenly credited as the first company to have come up with fully automatic/self-winding wristwatches. That credit actually goes to british watchmaker John Harwood who produced the first models (1920s). The mechanism was a bumper winding system; the kinetic energy needed to keep the watch running came from a "large" weight in the shape of a hammer that was attached centrally at the movement and could freely rotate around an arc of about 200-270 degrees.
EDIT : Here's what it looks like
Rolex did kinda modernize the concept by bringing a free spinning rotor system with a counter-weight that moves 360 degrees in either direction without limitation. A full oscillation is more energy efficient than bumping back and forth. I say "kinda" since Rolex actually borrowed the technology from another company named Aegler for itself.
On another note, l often hear people telling me they don't need a watch coz they already have a phone.
Fair enough, I can't argue with the accuracy of a device that uses both an internal clock system (quartz crystal resonator or a sillicone one), and a connection to GPS satellites atomic clocks through local time servers.
I find it interesting though that so many people have switched back to the inconvenient era of pocket watches....
