# Jan. 3, 1957: Electric Watch Debuts, A Space Age Marvel



## Retronaut (Jun 14, 2010)

Saw this article the other day - thought I'd post in here....

(please move or delete if in wrong place / not allowed)

http://www.wired.com...electric-watch/

*Jan. 3, 1957: Electric Watch Debuts, a Space Age Marvel*


 By Tony Long  







 

 January 3, 2011 |
 7:00 am |
 Categories: 20th century, Gadgets, Inventions



[IMG alt="electric_watch_250px.jpg"...intech/2011/01/electric_watch_250px.jpg[/IMG]

*1957:* The Hamilton Electric 500 is announced at a press conference. It is the first battery-operated electric wristwatch and the first to never need winding.

The 500 was made by the Hamilton Watch Company of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, which began developing the timepiece in 1946. Eleven years later, that development was not yet complete but the company, feeling the pressure of competition and wanting badly to be the first out the door with this innovation, called the press conference and went into production.

It was an instant hit at a time when â€œprogressâ€ was the watchword and all eyes looked expectantly to the future. And it was, briefly, the â€œwatch of the future,â€ with its ultramodern design and cutting-edge technology. But there were fundamental problems with the 500 that soon became apparent.

Battery life was relatively short, for one thing, so while winding was no longer necessary, frequent battery replacement â€" in some ways a more arduous chore â€" was. And â€œnewerâ€ doesnâ€™t always mean â€œbetter,â€ which the 500 proved by being prone to failure, making it less reliable than the standard wind-up watch.

In the end, though, Hamiltonâ€™s technology was not only flawed, but transitional: The watchâ€™s hands were driven by a complex wheel train. By the late 1960s, quartz movements â€" with many fewer parts â€" had arrived, and Hamilton ended production in 1969.

The 500 is now a highly prized collectorsâ€™ piece.

Source: hamiltonwristwatch.com

Photo: The watch battery is smaller than the button on the shirt cuff.

Bettmann/Corbis

This article first appeared on Wired.com Jan. 3, 2008.


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## Chromejob (Jul 28, 2006)

That's a nice looking watch, eh?

BTW. Better to post an excerpt from the article, and a link to the full article. Some content owners don't like to find their copyrighted material to be reprinted whole cloth on other sites ... in which our host is the one who gets the angry C&D letter.


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## Silver Hawk (Dec 2, 2003)

David Spalding said:


> BTW. Better to post an excerpt from the article, and a link to the full article. Some *content owners* don't like to find their copyrighted material to be reprinted whole cloth on other sites ... in which our host is the one who gets the angry C&D letter.


We might find out. Since the *content author* (Source: hamiltonwristwatch.com) is a member of this Forum.


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## Chromejob (Jul 28, 2006)

Silver Hawk said:


> David Spalding said:
> 
> 
> > BTW. Better to post an excerpt from the article, and a link to the full article. Some *content owners* don't like to find their copyrighted material to be reprinted whole cloth on other sites ... in which our host is the one who gets the angry C&D letter.
> ...


Who are you saying is the author -- Rene (whom I lived very close to, in Novato, for some years!), the credited author Tony Long, or the site from which the article is copied WIRED.COM? I suspect the © is held by Wired.

I'm not trying to be a schmuck, just prevent unneeded nastiness for our host. I've been through this both as the copyright holder and a site host before. Usually just an annoyance, but I know people who've had to change their sites due to C&D complaints.


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## Silver Hawk (Dec 2, 2003)

David Spalding said:


> Silver Hawk said:
> 
> 
> > David Spalding said:
> ...


I had assumed the author was RenÃ© ("HamiltonElectric" on this Forum) because the article said Source:hamiltonwatch.com...which is RenÃ©'s site...but I guess the article could be referring to RenÃ© as the source of the information rather than the verbatim text in the article.

No worries.


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## pg tips (May 16, 2003)

mountains and molehills spring to mind,

I'm sure someone will be in touch with Roy if it's a problem


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## mel (Dec 6, 2006)

Copyrights thing is a minefield for website owners, I had a complete website (lock stock and two smoking barrels) plagiarised out from under me by a chancer who used the "wayback machine" and a clever bit of javascript to copy pages from one step behind the current ones and registered a "dotcom" version of the same domain I registered as a "dotcodotuk", but eventually I had to close down the abuse by proving to "wayback" he was doing this. Took some months though and a lot of proving! Luckily I had copyright notices on all pages and dates of updates plus ftp logs to prove what I was saying was correct. :yes:

On a similar tack, The British Red Cross has today officially and legally warned the Pavilion Theatre in Glasgow that using a Red Cross on the white hat and apron worn by their pantomime Dame for a four minute sketch is in breach of International Laws under the Geneva Convention and renders them liable to prosecution :taz: ( I kid not!)


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## Stinch (Jul 9, 2008)

mel said:


> On a similar tack, The British Red Cross has today officially and legally warned the Pavilion Theatre in Glasgow that using a Red Cross on the white hat and apron worn by their pantomime Dame for a four minute sketch is in breach of International Laws under the Geneva Convention and renders them liable to prosecution :taz: ( I kid not!)


Yeah I was somewhat 'gobsmacked' when I heard that earlier Mel. Someone in the Red Cross seems to have lost touch with reality.


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## Dr_Niss (Jan 4, 2011)

Nice watch and the same age as me


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