Time for Smartwatches Part 1

what we are currently calling smart watches. Right. So with that in mind, we decided to split this episode into two to make it more fun sized for all of our listeners out there who may want to listen to podcasts that don't have me talking on them. I don't know why you do that, but anyway, we have decided

to split this up. So in this first episode, we're going to really focus on the development of wrist watches, into the development of digital watches, and then leading right up to the the very birth I would say, of what would become smart watch, the point at which these devices started um getting interconnected, right, and a little bit more than just about time. So smart watch I guess it's a watch that does things betther than time. Yes.

Here's the thing about smart watches is that the definition is somewhat vague, and it's probably because we've got a lot of different ways that people are coming at the smart watch design. It's kind of a convergence really, which is for those of you who have been listening to tech stuff for a long time, you remember that's one of my favorite words in the whole wide world. Convergence, this idea of very previous types of things converging into

a single form factor. And we're seeing this across multiple platforms, not just with watches obviously. Sure sure, I mean you know, as as technology as is letting UM chips be smaller and more powerful, and as displays are getting um more energy efficient and um more more capable of show and stuff. Yeah, exactly. You know, as as the touchscreen capabilities are getting better, voice recognition capabilities are getting better, it's making the smart

watch more of a reality. Although, as we'll see, the idea of a smart watch, or at least a watch that is able to do more than just tell time, is not exactly a new idea. It's actually been around for several decades, but really defining it as tough really because as we add more capabilities to watches, we then have to have the discussion of does this make it a smart watch? And more frequently than not, I see

people say, no, that's not really a smart watch. So really a smart watch is more about what a watch isn't rather than what a watches right right, And you know, it's if we were talking a little bit before the show, and I kind of think that the you know, if we can define a smart phone as um as as a phone that lets you, um access the internet and access the power of the Internet through various things like

apps and browsers. But but but furthermore, choose what software you put on it, most watches are not really at that point yet, even I mean most smart watches, even you know, there are a few. There are a few instances of smart watches that are running something like the Android operating system that allows you to install apps, although the utility of those apps is somewhat compromised by the

fact that the watch form factor is pretty small. So using a lot of apps that are designed for a screen that's at least the size of a smartphone, if not a tablet makes it problematic when you're getting down to the smartphone size. Yeah. Yeah, So so I would say that a smart watch is probably more like something that um that allows you to have connectivity to your other devices, right, it might be a second screen experience

for something like a smartphone. Uh. It's really you know, getting into this era of wearable computers, and we're seeing that grow year over year, and I think the watch is going to be probably one of the earliest examples of a wearable computer, but we're going to see this

implemented into lots of stuff, uh in the future. We we've got activity trackers, which we've talked about in previous podcasts, and in fact, activity trackers and smart watches are converging as well, just not just the smartphone and watch models, or even the computer and watch models, because because a lot of these smart watches coming out have some of those um, you know, GPS tracking components are a pedometer gyroscope, but will let you, um right right track whatever you're doing,

whether how many steps you're taking or whatever. And we'll talk about a couple of those one in particular as we go on in this podcast. So so we're kind of narrowing down the definition. But to really understand about aren't watches, it would help for us to kind of take a trip through time. Ha ha, since we're talking about time anyway, Lauren is just going to be shaking your head through this whole episode because which I'm like,

electricity lends itself to lots of puns. Yeah, that's why you know it's gonna be a good episode when Jonathan opens the show and I just go yeah, yeah, yeah, I know that she's already shaking her head twice and we haven't really gotten started yet. Anyway, Let's let's look at the history of watches and clocks in general. So, first of all, clocks date back hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years, especially if you're going to things like water clocks or hour glass anything that is used to

track the passage of time. But if you want to talk about watches, something that's a wearable clock, you really got to go all the way back to the sixteenth century hundreds. So this is the same century where Henry the Eighth wed and wived, and wood and beheaded and lots of other stuff round around that same time. This is the time at which Shakespeare would have gone like, man, that's a minute ago. Yeah yeah, Actually Shakespeare for the for the earliest watches would have gone, I'm not born yet,

but yeah yeah. Watches at this time were mostly coming out of Germany. There are a couple of cities and well what would be Germany and uh. The watches at those times were these big, heavy things made out of bronze that really only had our hand. They didn't have a minute hand at all. And because they that, the mechanism um would have been some kind of um. I was pretty primitive. Like this was before they had invented screws for things like watches, so they're like giant pegs

holding this stuff together. Really, the watches were these enormous, heavy pieces of jewelry that weren't meant to help you keep time. It wasn't. I mean that's what they were supposed to do, but that's not what they actually did. What they really did was they acted as status symbols. So flavor. Flavor would have been perfectly at home at

this time, because that's how you wore them. Under these you have an enormous chain holding it up a big what I'm from the street, Well, I'm from a street anyway, big heavy watches that were meant to show off status, wasn't you know, because they were expensive, they were very difficult to make, they didn't work so well. Uh, which really when you get down to smart watches, kind of mirrors the development of the smart watch. So but at any rate that they were just wearable clocks, so so

not a wrist watch at all. These things were heavy and you warm around your neck and on a big chain. Eventually, the the technique for making watches improved, you began to see more precision in watches and clocks as well, and they began to get smaller and lighter and so yeah, and they were still in his pendants really until the late sixteen hundreds, So around the sixteen seventies or so, that's about the time that the waistcoat became a fashion statement.

So once the waistcoat became a fashion statement, also pockets became a thing, and that's when we started seeing the pocket watch. So the next step in the evolution of the wrist watch was the very first wrist watch. Now there's some reports that say that people began to modify pocket watches so that they could be worn around the wrist, mostly for the ladies, because gentlemen like to have a big, old, unwieldy pocket watch because it showed how again wealthy and

important they were. Right. But but as ladies did not necessarily wear waistcoats, I imagine that was a that was a fashion thing. Where again you're just going like, look, I've got twenty eight yards of dress, zero pocket, right, I need I need a way to show off that both one I'm important and too I need to know what time it is. Uh So, in eighteen sixty eight, a Swiss watch manufacturer named Petick Philippe created the first

documented wristwatch. Now, again, there may have been wristwatches before this, but this is the first time that anyone actually bothered to say this is this is it? This was designed to be worn upon the wrist, and it was jewelry, it was ornamentation. It was meant for a lady. In fact, it was a very important lady, the Countess Costcowitz of Hungary and h Other watches again may have been adapted for bracelets, but this is the first one that was

designed for that purpose and actually documented as such. That's according to the Guinness Book World Records. By the way, now, if you go up to the eighteen eighties. That's when another Swiss watch manufacturer began to mass manufacturer wrist watches for German military officials who wanted to have a way of of of synchronizing time, but not have something so

unwieldy as a pocket watch. Now, if you want to talk about a wristwatch designed for the general consumer and not just the military, you have to get up to four. And that's when Louis Cartier designed the first wrist watch for a man that was not designed as just a military wrist watch. It was for Alberto Santos Dumont, who wanted a time piece he could use while he was also operating his marvelous flying machine, because while piloting a machine, he wanted to have both his hands available at any

time and not fumble for a pucket watch. That's fair, Yeah, I can see that. So Cartier created a wrist watch for his buddy, and he called it the the Santo and they began to manufacture them in mass amounts around nineteen eleven, and that's when we started seeing wrist watches hit the actual general public. And then we have to skip ahead to digital watches. So the first digital watch. That's why like what the nineteen seventies, the twenties say what say what? Yeah, no, no, it was it was

a mechanical digital watch. So we're kind of stretching the definition here, but um, but but by digital I mean showed numbers on its face that moved, rather than a

watch hand that that aund circulate around the face. So we're talking about digits like the way you would think of an analog pinball machine where he had the little digit counters which would fall when you use your supple wrist to play pinball better than anyone down in soho, what was basically going on was was instead of having having watch hands move, it would be a little dial with numbers that would that it would would turn right. So so this was designed by well, it was the

court to bear digital wristwatch in the nineteen twenties. Just like saying that word. Yeah, so spoiler alert here, guys. I actually didn't know about this, but only because I

had looked it up just before Laurence started talking. So um, yeah, So the nine twenties first digital wristwatch do for digital being that the digits are written down as opposed to and the digits move as opposed to uh, an actual watch hand sure right, um, And and now other other stuff was going on in the early twentieth century with

with watch technology. Um. The quartz movement was invented in the nineteen thirties in larger clocks not at all and risk watches yet and and quartz movement UM just means that that when you hook up a quartz crystal to an electric battery, the it will vibrate a very specific frequency. Yeah, it's it's the piece of electric effect. That is what

it's called, thank you. And when you when you you know, hook up a bunch of gears mechanisms to this quartz crystal, then it will vibrate the the mechanism, the mechanism in time, which is how we get ticking watches. And because it's such or ticking clocks, yeah, because it's such a a regular occurrence, then it kept time in the level of precision that had not been really affordable for any up

to this point except for the very very wealthy. Because I mean, like the Swiss clockmakers were famed for their precision, but this was tear springs and by hand, I mean, this is like not a mass manufacturing kind of way. And making sure that making sure that add that that you could wind it in a way that would not decrease the accuracy. Yes, because as as this mechanism would wear down, it would become less accurate over time, less precise over time. So the because precision and accuracy being

related but different things. Yeah. Now, if we get up to nineteen six, that's when a character who was becoming quite well known in the comics strips the funny papers, Dick Tracy, plain clothes cop. You may have heard of

this character, if you're not familiar with him. Uh, he was a crime fighting cop who had lots of different adventures throughout decades and decades of stories that the comics are actually debuted in nine thirty one, Right, there was a movie with Warren Batty in something around there, right when Madonna did all the music. Right, Yeah, she played one of the characters. Yeah, that happened. Dick Tracy had lots and lots of adventures. Well six, that's when he

got his infamous two way wrist radio. Now, this was one of those examples of using something like the wrist watch had now become something of a fashion item by the forties, and so now this was taking it to the next step, having a two way radio on your on your wrist as opposed to some sort of enormous radio that you're carrying around um and it gave Dick Tracy that edge over some of the nefarious evil doers

they would face off against. In nineteen sixty four, he upgraded his two way wrist radio to a two way TV screen so you could actually see stuff and be recorded back, obviously decades ahead of any real world technology that would allow you to do do this now. I should also point out that in nineteen six, this is before anyone outside of a few laboratory folks had any inkling that a transistor would even be a possibility. So transistors are what actually allowed us to go the route

of miniaturization and have technology that's that's that's tiny. Other before that, I mean you you're talking about vacuum tubes and enormous pieces of of of electronic equipment. That's one of the reasons why we didn't have that quartz movement in uh in wrist watches yet because it's hard to

get that manaturization. But it was starting to to follow through um so in in nineteen fifty four, Popular Science showed off a prototype wrist radio, so already people were talking about it being like Dick Tracy's uh wrist radio, which, by the way, to this day, when you see smart watches announced, there's about a seventy chance there's gonna be

a Dick Tracy reference in there somewhere. I mean, I remember seeing those in two thousand nine, and I'll get to that when we get to that part of the podcast. But I think that must be a law. It's really enduring image. It is. So the one in that Popular Science showed off was designed by Sylvania and it had a transmitter, so it wasn't just a radio as in a receiver where you could listen to the radio on

your on your wrist. I've seen other radios that were designed that way, wrist radios, but they were just receivers. So it's like having a pocket radio, except reward on your wrist instead of in your pocket. Uh. This was a transmitter as well, so you could actually communicate with somebody. But again, just to prototype wasn't meant for mass consumption. It wasn't until that we even had a watch that ran off of a battery instead of needing to be wound.

Holy cow. It's it's still used a balance wheel mechanism. Um. Again, the Courts technology had not been miniaturized yet, got you, So it's but still we're making progress. We are making progress. UM. Nineteen sixty was when Belova released their first Acutron watch, and that was that was a kind of a takeoff

of the Courts movement. UM. It used a nickel alloy to to vibrate with the electric current of a battery UM at a at a less accurate interval, not as precisest quarts, but still better than what had come before. Certainly nice. I like Acutron like a very very anal retentive robot, like the The Accutron is the is the robot that goes on Twitter and starts every tweet with

well actually, and he knows something. By the time this podcast has circulated, someone will have made an Accutron Twitter account, if there's not one already, I guarantee it. I certainly hope so I will be very disappointed if Acutron is not active with a week. Within a week of this podcast going live, get on that listener, and every tweet has to start with well actually, all right. Seven UM was when the c e h the Center Electronic hor Lagger,

which was a Swiss research lab. The swisss mixing German and French together in a way that just defies my ability to pronounce things. They that was the year that they that they came out with a prototype of a miniaturized courts movement clock. Um. It did not hit the market because because the I think the Swiss were kind of like, we can do so much better with mechanical stuff, and then they were doing really well with mechanical movements

at the time, so um uh yeah. Yeah. The in in nineteen sixty nine, that was the first commercial release of a quarts movement watch. That was Sacho's um s q Astron. Yes. Psacho would become a big name in watches over the next couple of decades. It should be mentioned that this first uh commercial courts movement watch was such a technical failure that it was recalled after only a hundred pieces were made. Oh not yet, but but

it was. It was an important I think it really got the world to set up and pay attention and go like, oh no, no, no, this is a thing that is going to happen and we should start getting on it, all right, So let's let's talk about an actual electronic digital watch, not a mechanical one that happened in seventy two. That was Hamilton's made it, and it was called the Pulsar P one Limited Edition Pulsar Um

it was. It was. It was encased in eighteen gold. Yeah, and it was using an LED display with behind a synthetic ruby crystal, right, so all the light was kind of like it was like a Cylon visor from the like a toaster, the classic Galactica, you know, the good one. Oh well, okay, that's a whole other conversation. Um uh. So it was a little expensive, as I recall it was. It was dollars at the time, which equals out to

about eleven thousand, four hundred in today's currency. So yeah, if you got about twelve grand to drop on a digital watch, that's the one that you would have bought. And and well, you know, it was the only one there, so I guess that's I guess that's why I would have thought. But and and you know, certainly certainly gold gold watches with with you know, all of the fixings these days are still quite expensive. That's true. There are watches that are well beyond the eleven thousand dollar mark.

But this was this was pretty expensive. Now I will I will say that it was a celebrity watch because it was seen in a film, Uh, Live and Let Die, which was one of the James Bond movies. Yeah, um it was. It was also Yeah, it had it had a twenty five chip circuit. Yeah and um and then

I'm crazy. So supposedly the idea for this watch. Hamilton's had done a digital clock for Stanley Kubrick's film two thousand one, and um, this is this is according to it to a great little article from the BBC that all all link on social and um and yeah, and and that kind of inspired the team to to put together the wrist watcher. Now, uh, you know, we're getting to the point here we're still talking about just wrist watches here, digital wrist watches, but still just something that

tells time. But we're slowly working towards the this this idea of a wrist watch that can do more. And I'll keep in mind we had the examples of the two way wrist radio, which wasn't necessarily a watch, but was taking the watch form factor and converting it into something else. But we're now getting into an era even now in the seventy when we're talking about watches that

could do more than just tell time. Uh. It was also the mid seventies when we started seeing the price for digital watches start to drop, when other companies got involved and began to find ways of mass manufacturing transistors at at a price that was way more affordable, right right. Also, Ellie l c D was coming onto the scene a little bit in in nineteen seventy three, Saco had the

first liquid crystal display watch UM. And then but but it was around seventy six UM companies like like Texas Instruments UM started putting out these like twenty dollar digital watches UM, and you know, including in seventy seven they had like a whole Star Wars license line that was you know, it was for seventeen bucks and that's including the license fee. So you know, so much much less expensive than the than the two thousand watch that came

out just a few years earlier. And uh so in nineteen seventies six, that's what Hamilton's you know, they were the ones who got on the on the board with the first digital watch. They came out with the first calculator watch one of the first ones to hit the market.

There were a few companies that were vying for the time but I think I think Hamilton's might have gotten it under the y that the buttons on this were so small that they had to be pressed with a stylists which was included with the watch, and you would, I hope not lose it immediately because if you did, it just became a very uh, buttony looking digital watch. You couldn't and if you were in the middle of a calculation, I assumed that eventually it would fade away

to whatever the time was. But in HP got on with the their version of the calculator watch, which was the HP O one. They marketed it as a time machine because it was both a watch and a calculator. So it cost U fifty bucks for this steel model. We wanted it in gold it would be um. But then we started seeing other trends follow so it was you know, at first it was the calculator watch, but

we started seeing other kinds of specialized digital watches. Right right right in there was a a gaming watch and uh and this this played a little three line version of Space Invaders. This is a Cassio Watch. I described it thus Lee this is in my notes. Uh, you would use a blip that would fire blips at other blips.

It sounds like a great game. Yeah, from what I saw it was it was horizontally aligned, so your little blip was on one side and the enemy blips were on the other side, and you would fire your blips across to those blips before they could destroy you. But I also told the time. It also told the time gaming watch. This is something else that that keeps me amused.

I remember there are lots of different comic strips that joked about the fancy watch that had all the different apps on it, and then they said what time is it? And then the responsibly time. Yeah. Either either it would take them forever to figure out how to activate whatever the time feature was, or the time features just not

there trombone. Of course, later in the nineties they would come out with, um, you know, watches that did miniature versions of like Super Mario Brothers and Zelda and like. We would see a lot more game watches come out after that, but this was the first one. And that year was also when Cassio came out with a less expensive calculator watch, something that the average person could afford, not you know, drop close to a thousand dollars on it.

It also came out with a watch calculator watch the head buttons large enough for you to press with your finger and not have to re upon a stylus or paper clip, as I'm sure so many people had to rely upon once they immediately lost stylus. Yea, I'm just assuming that some people are at least some people who bought this watch are as irresponsible as I am. You know, we all look at the world through our own lens, right, and yours is one of irresponsibility. Psacho produced a wrist

watch with a tiny TV screen. This blows my mind, okay, and well, I mean, okay, it kind of sounds impressive, but it was. It was a blue gray l c D screen and um, it had to have an external box hooked up to the top of it so that it could actually do the tuning right right, So you didn't have a television tuner built into a wrist watch. It was. It was a tuner that would attach by a port plug it in. Yeah, then you could view the t and it's not like a portable TV that

you could take with you wherever. No. Um, but but but it was pretty cool. Um that same year, Cassio came out with a watch that also had a thermometer. Very useful and it's super super useful. Often wonder what temperature my wrist was? And what Hey that that that becomes extremely useful and fitness day later on. I'm being snarky, but I think this one just told the ambient temperature of the room, and so like, why am I sweating? Oh,

it's three degrees um? And the and and also that there was a watch that had from from Cassio that had a word Japanese to English translator in it, which is which is actually pretty cool for the time. That's that's that's actually really interesting, y'all. Yeah. I wonder if Sean Connery had one of those in that movie US And where he played the Japanese expert. Nothing like Sean Connery being a Japanese expert. By the way, The Rising Sun, Okay,

that Michael, that Michael Creton book. I I remember the novel. I never saw them. It was it was an experience. We should That's another movie we could do a tech stuff episode about because they have a whole thing about digital manipulation, which was basically any Michael Crichton book though would are. But the way they display digital manipulation in this movie it was uh not realistic for the time, but it's something we could totally do now. In fact,

it's something that a Disney ride does right now. So anyway, off topic, So getting back to watches, uh, in three that's the first time that we had Saco put out a watch called the Data two thousand and and this and this was a little a little thing that you could you could set it on a I think it was a magnetically driven keypad and um, and and and enter data into the watch from this key pass so make it easier to put data in as opposed to

having to use tiny little buttons or some weird button combination. It was. It was still the pictures ever, remind me very much of you know, maybe like like the Microsoft Xbox keyboard keyboard for the controller. Yeah, so still a tiny keyboard, but but bigger, bigger than what you would

normally see on a watch. Yes, certainly. Um. That's also the same year that Cassio came out with the c D forty, which was a wrist watch that had twenty four buttons that would let you type in short digital notes, so kind of like kind of like a little memo taking or database type watch, but still you know, self contained, right, like everything you put on the watch stayed on the watch. There was no way other than transcribing it to get

the data off the watch. Four saw Saco's UM, a kind of advanced version of this of the statatuoe thousand called the U C two thousand, and that had a slightly more enhanced keyboard and UM would let you program on the watch in basic Wow, so you could have your own little program where when you run it, AT prints out a little picture using asterisks as the the image. Because that's what I used to do basic. That's about as far as I got in basic programming, which other

things as well. I'm sure it could be done. And that U and that's when Cassio released the t M one hundred, which this was the first UH watch I discovered while while doing research for this podcast. UM, which again takes you right back to the Dick Tracy wrist radio because it was a digital watch that had a tiny little antenna that you could extend from the launch.

It was actually cute. You can actually get a little extendable antenna that would come out of the watch and you could, uh, you could then speak into a microphone that was on the watch and transmit radio signals to any nearby radio tuned to the right frequency. So you had to tune the radio to whatever the frequency is. And this is not that unusual. We've seen lots of

other tech use this. I remember before UM, before it became more common to have MP three auxiliary hookups in your radio, you would use things that would you would hook your your iPod or other m P three player up to this little transmitter and the transmitter would transmit a very weak signal to a particular UM frequency, and then you would tune your radio to that frequency, and that would let you listen to your iPod in your car. Before we actually got to deeper levels of integration, same

sort of technology is going on here. The digital watch would transmit at a very weak signal at a certain frequency, and you could pick it up on nearby radios. Not terribly useful, but kind of interesting, Yeah, pretty cool. Never never went on sale in the United States. It went on sale in Asia apparently, but never in the US. UM Also that year, the that that BBC article that I mentioned said that Citizen came out with a watch that that had some kind of voice reaction software, which

is pretty cool. I did not come across that in my research, but yeah, that's that's really early for any kind of voice control type stuff. I'm not sure if it was voice controltrol. I yeah, I don't know. That's that's that's all I know about it, so we can't draw many conclusions. I would hope that it would allow you to at least turn the alarm off by screaming

at it. Only only screaming, right, That's kind of my reaction whenever I have anything that has an alarm that goes off that I did not remember had been set, screaming is usually my follow up. And then something about ye Cassio came out with a watch called the Cosmo Phase. Um so, uh did it just play back the time in Carl Sagan's voice? That would be so cool? Ullions

and billions of seconds to make your next appointment? It had it was an LCD display watch that um that was just chock full of planetary data, so um so it would it would tell you all kinds of things about about the phases of the moon and what planets were visible from different things and stuff. That's actually kind of cool. I mean, you know, it's it's again self contained information, right, It's not like it's it's not connective.

It's not downloading this off the Internet of eight, right, which that did exist, but hardly anyone had any access to it when you look at the general population. But you know, but but but that's a bunch of information to stick in a watch. If you can, you can track Hayley's comment from from like nine one through two or something like that. Um well, I mean if you're if you're marked Twain, you can talk about it just by being that's when you were one and when you died. Right.

So this wraps up the first part of our discussion about smart watches. We've got a lot more to talk about, including some watches that are actually smart. Yeah, I know you wouldn't even know it from the title, right. Well, anyway, that episode is coming up soon, so in the meantime, if you have any thoughts on things we should cover in future episodes of tech Stuff, please let us know. You can let us know in an email or I just is tech Stuff at Discovery dot com, or drop

us a line on Twitter or Facebook. Our handle of both of those is text Stuff hs W and Lauren and I will talk to you again in just a little more time. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com.