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LED (Light Emitting Diode) Watches were introduced in the 1970s as the first watches to use advances in micro electronic circuitry.
Vintage LED watches were expensive to produce and had "power-hungry" displays that tended to consume battery life quickly.
70s LED Digital Watches, Omega, Pulsar, Compuchron, Bulova, Armitron, Benrus, Fairchild, Commodore LED Watches, LED Calculator Watches, LED Gold Watches.
A History of Light Emitting Diode Displays
The LED was a team achievement. It was Richard S. Walton who patented the first LED timepiece in 1969, but credit must also go to the company RCA which developed a reliable electronic circuit, Litronics which developed a reliable LED display and there were also parallel projects. Also George Thiess and Willy Crabtree from Electro-Data based in Garland, Texas worked on a miniaturized LED watch circuitry which resulted in a short joint venture after being contacted by John M. Bergey an engineer at Hamilton Watch Company who lead a project team working on a digital wristwatch.
Bergey's team learned from Electro-Datas ideas and their combined patents finally made it possible to present a prototype in 1970 and a final marketable product named Pulsar was launched two years later on April 4th 1972 by the Hamilton Watch Company. Soon after Time Computer Inc. was established to market Pulsar LED watches. TC was a subsidiary of HMW Industries, a corporation formed after restructuring the Hamilton company. Due to enormous power consumption the LED display was turned off most of the time and only lit up to show time by means of pressing a (magnetic) button on the case.
The "P1" was offered for $2100 in a limited edition of 400 pieces in 18 kt. solid gold and sold out in a blitz by various celebrities around the world including the Shah of Iran. The price was outstanding and matched the price of an average car. Electro-Datas circuitry however proved to be a big failure and most of the first model watches had to be withdrawn from the market and fitted with a more robust Pulsar-made module 2800. This also ended the cooperation between both companies. PulsarP1 image
The value of the P1 still today sets at 10-15.000$ as only approx. 20 of the P1's exist today in working condition, thus making it the most desirable electronic watch ever made.
Note: Roger Riehl today is often credited for inventing the first LED watch (called Synchronar which was solar-charged. While there is no mistake that he greatly contributed to LED technology, he did not market it before 1974 and no proof can document his early achievements therefore he should not be credited with "inventing" the first LED. Still a damn cool watch though!
The first digital watch, a Pulsar prototype, was developed in 1970 jointly by Hamilton Watch Company and Electro-Data. John Bergey, the head of Hamilton’s Pulsar division, said that he was inspired to make a digital timepiece by the then-futuristic digital clock that Hamilton themselves made for the 1968 science fiction film 2001: A Space Odyssey. On April 4, 1972 the Pulsar was finally ready, made in 18-carat gold and sold for $2,100 at retail. It had a red light-emitting diode (LED) display. Another early digital watch innovator, Roger Riehl’s Synchronar Mark 1, provided an LED display and used solar cells to power the internal nicad batteries.
Most watches with LED displays required that the user press a button to see the time displayed for a few seconds, because LEDs used so much power that they could not be kept operating continuously. Watches with LED displays were popular for a few years, but soon the LED displays were superseded by liquid crystal displays (LCDs), which used less battery power and were much more convenient in use, with the display always visible and no need to push a button before seeing the time. The first LCD watch with a six-digit LCD was the 1973 Seiko 06LC, although various forms of early LCD watches with a four-digit display were marketed as early as 1972 including the 1972 Gruen Teletime LCD Watch, and the Cox Electronic Systems Quarza.
A Watch to Everyone
Digital watches were very expensive and out of reach to the common consumer until 1975, when Texas Instruments started to mass produce LED watches inside a plastic case. These watches, which first retailed for only $20, reduced to $10 in 1976, saw Pulsar lose $6 million and the brand sold to competitors twice in only a year, eventually becoming a subsidiary of Seiko and going back to making only analogue quartz watches.
From the 1980s onward, digital watch technology vastly improved. In 1982 Seiko produced a watch with a small television screen built in, and Casio produced a digital watch with a thermometer as well as another that could translate 1,500 Japanese words into English. In 1985, Casio produced the CFX-400 scientific calculator watch. In 1987 Casio produced a watch that could dial your telephone number and Citizen revealed one that would react to your voice. In 1995 Timex release a watch which allowed the wearer to download and store data from a computer to their wrist. Since their apex during the late 1980s to mid 1990s high technology fad, digital watches have mostly devolved into a simpler, less expensive basic time piece with little variety between models.
Despite these many advances, almost all watches with digital displays are used as timekeeping watches. Expensive watches for collectors rarely have digital displays since there is little demand for them. Less craftsmanship is required to make a digital watch face and most collectors find that analog dials (especially with complications) vary in quality more than digital dials due to the details and finishing of the parts that make up the dial (thus making the differences between a cheap and expensive watch more evident).
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