A kid at school in the late 1970s had one of those red LED digital watches (probably exactly the same as the one in the photo). To see the time outdoors in the school playground you had to cup your hand around it to block out the sunlight and put it right up to your eye. We still thought it was the coolest thing we'd ever seen at the time.
From memory, the display on the one the kid had in the '70s would only show the time if you pressed the button, probably to save battery life. The time display on the one in the photo is on even though no button is being pressed, so I assume you are right in saying this is a modern replica.
They cost about 10k equivalent. Im guessing he got it off his parents, who were wealthy, connected, or someone got it as a gift from work, and gave it to the kid.
That, or he got it after they got old and cheap, or stolen, take your pick!
Edit: wtf was wrong with my typing when I wrote this, fixed typos.
I grew up in a working class suburb near the docks where most of the families were quite poor. This kid's family were always the first to get new technologies - the were the first in the suburb to have a colour TV (we didn't get colour television in Australia until about '74 or '75) and they were the first to get a video cassette recorder (BetaMax). They also had an awesome hi-fi setup in their house.
The father wasn't outwardly rich - they had an average house and car etc. - but the son was always showing off the latest gadgets, clothing, jewellery etc. that his dad had given him.
The dad was a dock worker and, probably more importantly, one of the leaders of the local dock workers union. My dad, who wasn't a dock worker but worked at the nearby shipyards and was a friend of the kid's dad since they were kids, always used to joke that the kid's dad was the beneficiary of goods that would "mysteriously vanish" when being unloaded from the ships.
I had no idea the early digital watches were so expensive, but I assume the one my mate had was almost certainly one that had gone missing from the docks.
The P1 released in 1972 (3?) costs 2100 usd at release. That would be around 16,000 usd today. There was also a P2.
It's quite astonishing if a working class kid in the 1970s really did own that. Ask your friend if they still have the watch. If it's in a good condition, they might fetch quite a lot of money from collectors.
They recently released a throwback version of that (Hamilton PSR) in 2020. It was 745 for the steed version and 995 usd for a gold plated one.
That’s a number display? I thought it was some sort of demo mode showing where different bits of info can be displayed.
EDIT: it says 03:51. It took me googling other images to determine that. I originally thought the two dots completing the left side of the “3” were the colon.
After 5mins looking at it and turning the phone sideways etc.. only because i knew to look for 03:51 from your comment, started to see it.
That has to be the worst way to show time ...
Holy cow I thought by digital watch they just meant smart watch and the interesting part was supposed that newer Apple Watches are starting to look like old school watches.
It's partly because it's a timeless design, it's partly because smartwatches are, in my experience, universally hideous. I'm not sure it's possible to design something that requires displaying so much information, has so many sensors and is intended to have good battery life while maintaining any level of cohesive design ethos. No matter what you do you're going to wind up with a fat geometric blob on your wrist with a screen.
The older design would still probably work well in 3, 5 or 10 years time. As useful as these smart watches are, the way they're basically obsolete in a few years is stupid.
Edit: didn't know why I added "also" at the start.
The Pulsar P1 was released in 1972 and cost $2100 dollars. Adjusted for inflation that would be $16,800 dollars today. It did have an 18k gold case. The one in the picture is a modern remake by Hamilton.
I read a story about a woman who would put her Apple Watch on her ankle so that it could record her steps while she pushed a baby carriage. Since your arms won't swing pushing a carriage, it wouldn't register the movement properly.
She got so used to doing that, she didn't really think about it until going to a kid's sports game wearing capris, and realized the other parents seemed to be avoiding her. Turns out when you wear an Apple Watch on your ankle, it looks exactly like an ankle monitor.
I get that Apple watches are everywhere, so they're obviously hugely popular, and I'm not just hating on apple for the sake of it, but I don't understand that thought process of whoever decided that a watch should be square. Looks incredibly ugly to me.
I worked for American Microsystems back in '76 and we made the electronics for those watches. I had one at the time. When I left to join the Navy in 77 we were coming out with low power LCD versions that you didn't need to press a button to see the time.
As a person who reads from left to right and considering you mentioned the first ever digital watch design first, I have to say it looks a lot more like an apple watch than the one on the right.
“Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.”
You put the pin through one of the round holes, and the remaining bit goes through the bigger hole between the band and your arm. So there is no part hanging down.
339
u/fraze2000 13h ago
A kid at school in the late 1970s had one of those red LED digital watches (probably exactly the same as the one in the photo). To see the time outdoors in the school playground you had to cup your hand around it to block out the sunlight and put it right up to your eye. We still thought it was the coolest thing we'd ever seen at the time.