Forget the Apple Watch. Set Reminders With These Elegant Mechanical Timepieces

In 2018, Jaeger-LeCoultre released the Polaris Memovox, a modern version of an alarm watch it first began making in 1958. The new watch features a movement with a fully mechanical (as in, there’s no battery or electronics) alarm function that can be used to alert its wearer in a decidedly old-school, analog manner.

Long before the smartphone push notification became an integral part of our hectic business and leisure lives, people relied on simpler types of portable reminders. One of these was the so-called alarm watch, a wristwatch that could be set to audibly buzz at a predetermined hour—on a bedside nightstand to awaken its wearer from slumber in the morning, or on the wrist to remind him or her of an appointment during the day.