At the time, people were beginning to get excited about technology in general. Although prototype electronic wristwatches had appeared in the first half of the 1960s, European and Japanese companies were still exploring the quartz driven watch; at first, creating electronic analogue watches, then digital devices.
Swiss electronic watches took the first 10 places in an early competition which pitched them against Japanese models, but Japan fought back and in the early 1970s, the industry entered the so called ‘quartz crisis’, with Swiss companies losing market share to the likes of Citizen and Seiko.
But it wasn’t only the Swiss and Japanese competing: companies like Texas Instruments and, in the UK, Sinclair, were also developing digital watches, with varying degrees of success. Sinclair’s Black Watch, launched in 1975, suffered from high power consumption, questionable accuracy and an awful lot of consumer complaints.
Now, the focus is on smart watches, with Apple launching the other day, adding mobile and GPS functionality to the device to create what is, effectively, a PC on your wrist.
Remember the days when you only wanted to know the time?
