[NinjaTrance]

"When our time traveler peered into the windows of these shops, the first thing he'd notice was how large all the watches were."

My only question about this entire essay is... where did this time traveler came from???

"Our" time traveler was never mentioned until this line.

[badc0ffee]

Not true:

> The best way to answer that might be to imagine what someone from the golden age would notice if we brought him here in a time machine. [...] The first thing he'd notice, if he walked through a fancy shopping district, is that all the prominent watchmakers of the golden age seem to be doing better than ever.

[zahlman]

Clearly, the time traveler went back in time to get inserted into a paragraph that GP overlooked the first time.

[randallsquared]

It was several paragraphs before that, where pg said "[...] what someone from the golden age would notice if we brought him here in a time machine."

[rixrax]

Although PG isn't wrong here, people also have larger wrists nowadays that are able to comfortably support larger watches compared to ~50 years a go, never mind at the 1940s or 1950s.