Post pics of your watches Part II

Out and about this day wearing a "grail" I hunted for many a year. Have it ten years now. 😲😊

Basically KH; in the mid to late 1960's when the Swiss industry as a collective was getting together to build their first quartz movement the Beta 21, Girard Perregaux with some input from JLC went their own way. Building the first Swiss quartz with a stepping motor(the Beta used a tuning fork setup to drive the hands) and came up with the 32768 Hz frequency that became the standard for the majority of quartz that followed right down to today. The GP movement was also less delicate and complex and more modular than the Beta. It was also cheaper to produce, though cheaper is a relative term as in period these were still expensive watches. Beta watches ran about 1000 dollars, Longines Ultra-Quartz around 600, these were 3-400(an Omega Speedmaster was around 250, ditto for a steel Submariner). It also had superior torque so could use normal sized hands and a quick change date. It used Teflon bearings instead of jewels so never needed oiling and was the first quartz to pass observatory chronometer testing(much higher standard than chronometer). So I had an interest in them(and very early quartz in general) and consider them one of the most important movements in personal timekeeping.

Anyhoo; this particular "Tron" dial with the Motorola chip image in blue and gold versions(the gold being a one colour print, the blue a three)featured in their marketing of the time.

For me this was doubly cool and not just for horology, but also for the early days of computing and especially personal computing. Today we're so used to IT in damn near everything we use, but it's easy to forget that in 1970 unless you actually worked in the rarefied world of computing or somewhere like NASA, MIT, there were no "silicon chips" in your daily life and certainly not in your personal life. It was very much an analogue world, with at best "solid state" transistors only recently moved on from valves. It could be argued these early quartz watches from the Swiss and Japanese were the first real "personal computers".

and I wanted one sooooo badly. 😁

Problem was none of the early quartz collectors and horologist types had seen one "in the wild". The only example known was in GP's own collection(with an incorrect strap). On the various watch forums the Accepted Truth© came to be that they were only ever a promotional thing, never for sale to the general public. Feck! said I, but I kept my eye out. Saved Google and ebay searches. One trick I used to use was add searches with slightly incorrect spelling and of course not just on ebay.ie/com, but ebay.fr/de/es etc.

One evening a result popped up on French eBay. Listed as Girrard Peragaux(sic), non working, with a single photo taken with a myopic potato, at night.

That's after I enlarged and enhanced it too. Auction, two days to go, no bidders, opening bid 180 quid. Fortified by a Tesco Merlot of questionable parentage I threw a snipe of 220 quid at it. Last of the big spenders.😁 Two days later of nail chewing to the quick I won it as the only bidder. A few days later it was in my clammy hands. Tbh not being the sharpest knife in the drawer it took me a moment to figure out how the Milanese bracelet worked… The watch wasn't working, even with a new battery, but I noticed if I wore it after a while it would start up. Taking it apart I noticed someone had oiled the Teflon bearings(not the first I've seen with this). Doh! Gave it a clean and result! The first of these "in the wild".

Since I got my Tron dial fewer than a dozen, blue and gold, have come to light, four with the original strap(mine the only one with the original Milanese bracelet). Including one a Hodinkee contributor found. He didn't realise how rare they are. Maybe they were a promotional item? The only one I've seen still in the same family from new had been a retirement present in 1974 to a Motorola employee. My own suspicion is the dial was also a little too "out there" for what was an expensive watch and more conservative buyers would have gone for something less garish so they were a non seller?

Just seven years after the above GP Seiko came out with this:

It wasn't the first calculator digital watch, Pulsar had been first with their LED version, followed closely by Hewlett Packard of all people(and the only watch they produced). While analogue quartz had been a mostly Swiss enterprise with Seiko in the mix(first out, but barely and in tiny numbers), the digital was very much an American thing initially. The early bursts of Silicon Valley drove the tech pioneering different forms of display to market and progress was rapid. Then the Japanese kicked in, with more features, more rapid development and at a much lower price point. The Pulsar had been 4000 1975 dollars… Seiko's offerings more like 250.

IMHO it was this, the Digital Crisis that fecked the Swiss, not quartz itself as is usually stated. The Swiss offerings were always behind in tech and features and far more expensive and never caught up with what was becoming the trend in everyday watches at the time.

The above Seiko was just pipped to the post by Casio for the title of first LCD calculator watch. Both came along in 1977(mine's from December of that year). Funny enough it had a more fully featured calculator than Seiko's later replacement model with things like percentage, square root and a memory function. It came with a stylus to press the buttons so practicality was a bit meh. 😁 The later 80's Casio calculators were much better in this regard and could be used without a stylus.

The manual says it's not water resistant at all, so fair enough. Some translations are interesting too. Note how "spring bar" is written..

Very Japanese. 🙂

Note too they reckoned the LCD would blur or fade after five years and would need replacement, yet over forty years later it's still going. Original "Spling bars" too. Even the bulb still works(and it is a wee bulb). Then again this was my dad's and he only wore it on high days and holy days and my choccy covered kids sticky fingers of mass destruction were kept at a respectful distance at all times.

An interesting quirk is how you set the time/date. It's through the middle "crown" and you actually pull it out like an analogue crown to set it. Inside it has a setting lever like you'd find on a mechanical watch. To crank up the calculator you push the same crown in.

Fwiw B I'll do a bit of digging and keep my eye out. Matching dead/missing lume is handy enough too. Wearing this today and even as a 24 karat rank amateur I relumed the (flaky and horrifically atomic radium) hands on this:

The dial lume is original(far less nuclears going on). I even went fully OCD and made them ever so slightly darker than the dial lume as that's how the original lume looked, and now 'cos Seiko base lume they also glow in the dark like an 80's Ready Brek kid.😁 An actual pro would do a better job again so I'd still keep that as an option myself.

Having relumed all my originally radium stuff to remove the potential hazard and make them nighttime practical again too(purists be damned I say) I found the aged tan colour lume like yours the easiest to duplicate, the pale to grey stuff was much harder to match IME. I've also replaced original lead/leather seals where present with modern rubber ones. Seems to work too, at least for the purposes of the pissing rain, handwashing and the occasional dunking. I figure sensitive restomods are a thing with classic cars for practicality's sake so… 😁