{"id":52052,"date":"2022-04-20T11:09:44","date_gmt":"2022-04-20T18:09:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bobswatches.com\/rolex-blog\/?p=52052"},"modified":"2023-12-06T14:50:16","modified_gmt":"2023-12-06T22:50:16","slug":"evolution-watch-lume","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bobswatches.com\/rolex-blog\/rolex-news\/evolution-watch-lume.html","title":{"rendered":"The Evolution of Lume in Watches"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

We take it for granted today, but checking the time in the dark on luxury watches<\/a> wasn’t always possible. The minute repeater complication (which chimes the time on demand) was invented to solve that very problem. But by the early-1900s, watch dials could glow thanks to the invention of luminous paint. While we later learned that early radium-based luminescence was highly toxic, watches that emitted their own light (and thus, could be read in the dark) were a magical proposition at the turn of the 20th Century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the several ways to determine an approximate era of when a watch was made is to see if it has any luminous material on the dial and if so, identify the type. That\u2019s because like almost every other timepiece component, watch luminescence, better known as “lume” in watch circles, has also evolved over the last century or so. If you\u2019re interested in learning a bit of history about the evolution of watch lume, keep reading as we go through a brief overview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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