Did Colonial Americans Wear Wristwatches? And More Questions From Our Readers

Did colonial Americans wear wristwatches? Wilby McLeod | Savage Harbour, Prince Edward Island

By the middle of the 1700s, women and men from a range of professions—including those who founded the United States—owned watches. Thomas Jefferson, for example, owned perhaps eight; George Washington had at least one. But these were not worn on the wrist. A woman usually wore hers near the waistband of her dress. A man wore his in his fob, a pocket with a horizontal opening just below the waist of his breeches. Connected to the watch, but hanging outside the pocket, might have been a tassel or short metal chains to hold a watch-winding key, a seal or other trinkets. The wristwatch as we know it originated in the second half of the 1800s. It first appeared as an expensive piece of women’s jewelry. Mary Todd Lincoln owned one, an enameled bangle set with diamonds and a tiny watch movement fashioned by a Swiss maker. Several more evolutionary steps occurred before the wristwatch emerged as a standard timekeeper for women and men in the 20th century. —Carlene Stephens, curator of clocks and watches, National Museum of American History

What kinds of creatures evolved into dinosaurs? Thomas Connor | Cincinnati

The first dinosaurs evolved alongside several other closely related reptile lineages that give us some idea of what the ancestors of dinosaurs were like. One form, Lagosuchus, was a small bipedal carnivore, around three feet long. Silesaurids, long-legged quadrupeds, were between three and ten feet long, with carnivorous and herbivorous forms. Remains of these early dinosaur relatives—including footprints—have been found around the world, indicating that they were widespread. Even so, they were only a small component of their ecosystems, which were dominated by larger non-dinosaur reptiles such as phytosaurs, aetosaurs, poposaurs and early relatives of crocodilians. —Matthew Carrano, curator of dinosaurs, National Museum of Natural History

Why was the USSR able to launch Sputnik before the U.S. got a satellite into space? David Passmore | Philadelphia

The U.S. and the USSR developed their satellites as part of a global scientific project called the International Geophysical Year. Sixty-seven countries joined the effort to expand scientific knowledge, and the two superpowers announced plans to launch rockets that could orbit the Earth. Both had the same starting point: Nazi Germany’s V-2, the first long-range guided ballistic rocket, which launched in 1944 (but didn’t go into orbit). The U.S. established two independent programs—the Army Ballistic Missile Agency continued to refine the V-2, while the U.S. Air Force worked on a more sophisticated rocket called the Vanguard. In contrast, Soviet engineers developed a rocket more closely based on the V-2, opting for a simple satellite that would merely broadcast its presence. The USSR’s Sputnik launch on October 4, 1957, did demonstrate agility in getting the first human-made object into orbit, but without making meaningful contributions to the understanding of geophysics at the time. It’s worth noting that the first successfully launched Vanguard satellite—which the U.S. launched on March 17, 1958—remains in orbit nearly 67 years later. —Cathleen Lewis, curator of international space programs, National Air and Space Museum