Mechanical Timepieces

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Elizabeth Lowry, Every Year Is Getting Shorter. By the 1800s, workers could afford to buy pocket watches; the eight-hour workday regimented their lives further. Wall
Street Journal, Feb 5, 2014
online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB40001424052702304347904579308481967213094
(book review on Roman Krznaric, How Should We Live?  Create ideas from the past for everyday life. BlueBridge, 2013)

Quote: "Since the mechanical clock was invented in the 13th century, we have gradually become captives to it. The meager one-hour lunch break was a 14th-century German innovation; by the 1800s, pocket watches had become so affordable that laborers could carry them about, chained to their clothing—although, as Mr Krznaric wryly notes, 'it was unclear who was chained to whom.' Wristwatches appeared in the 1880s. ('At last the voluntary handcuff had arrived.') The Industrial Revolution brought about round-the-clock shift work; the eight-hour working day, a humane innovation, nevertheless helped regiment our lives further.

Note:
(a) The northern English, Scottish, and Irish surname Lowry is "from a pet form of Lawrence."

(b) The quotation abov is all you need to rad. In other words, there is no need to read the rest of the book review (about life styles). Parsing the quotation follows.

(c) "the mechanical clock was invented in the 13th century"
(i) Escapement has formed the basis of all-mechanical timepieces, from ancient times to the present. Of which, verge escapement was the one used "from the 1[3]th century until the mid 19th century in clocks and pocketwatches."
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verge_escapement
(ii) An overview of a timepiece.

Oliver Cooke, The Basics--How a Timekeeper Works. Antiquarian Horological Society (abbreviation: AHS; based in Ticehurst, Sussex, England), Apr 26, 2013.
c7707244.myzen.co.uk/blog/?p=1475
(section 1: Energy Source; section 3: Escapement))
(iii) verge escapement
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verge_escapement
(The name verge comes from the Latin virga, meaning stick or rod; section 3 How it works: describing a crown wheel whose axis is horizontal, rather than vertical
(A) Various definitions of the noun "verge" has the same Latin root.
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/verge
(B) It is all right if you do not understand section 3. View the animation in (iv).
(iv) Peter Ceperley, Perspective view animation of the Verge and Foliot escapement. Mason Archival Repository Service, George Mason University, Mar 18, 2011.
digilib.gmu.edu/dspace/handle/1920/6189

(d) "by the 1800s, pocket watches had become so affordable that laborers could carry them about, chained to their clothing"

pocket watch
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pocket_watch
(An early reference to the pocket watch is in a letter in November 1462 from the Italian clockmaker Bartholomew Manfredi to the Marchese di Mantova Federico Gonzaga, where he offers him a "pocket clock"/ Up to the 1720s, almost all watch movements were based on the verge escapement, which had been developed for large public clocks)

(e) "Wristwatches appeared in the 1880s."

watch
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watch
(section 1.1 Wristwatch: "Wristwatches were first worn by military men towards the end of the 19th century, when the importance of synchronizing maneouvres during war, without potentially revealing the plan to the enemy through signalling, was increasingly recognized. *  * * Officers in the British Army began using wristwatches during colonial military campaigns in the 1880s, such as during the Anglo-Burma War of 1885")

(f) "The Industrial Revolution brought about round-the-clock shift work; the eight-hour working day, a humane innovation, nevertheless helped regiment our lives further."
(i) Shift work started in large scale after Thomas Edison successfully developed incandescent light bulb in 1879.
(ii) eight-hour day
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day
(Robert Owen [a Welsh] had raised the demand for a ten-hour day in 1810, and instituted it in his socialist enterprise [cotton mill powered by River Clyde] at New Lanark[, Scotland])