Pulsar Electronic Wristwatch
date: label: Date made
content: ca 1972
name: label: maker
content: Hamilton Watch Co.
notes: label: Description
content: Most Americans learned about digital electronic watches for the first time when the Pulsar came on the market in 1972.
label: Description
content: The Pulsar originated in a watch built by George Thiess and colleagues at ElectroData, a small electronics firm in Garland, Texas, and developed into a marketable piece of fine jewelry when ElectroData partnered with a division of the Hamilton Watch Co. of Lancaster, Pa. The watch had no moving parts. It was huge, showy and expensive. With a price tag of $2100, the Pulsar cost about as much as a small car at that time.
label: Description
content: Hamilton marketed the watch as "a time computer." The display was composed of light-emitting diodes (LEDs) that consumed so much power that the watch couldn't display the time continuously. Instead, the wearer had to push a button to illuminate the time. Pressing the button briefly displayed the hour and minute. Holding the button down a little longer showed the seconds. To set the watch required a small magnet stored in the watchband's clasp.
label: Description
content: For these inconveniences, Pulsar's proud owner got the most accurate time then available in a wristwatch. The new quartz technology inside made the watch accurate to within a minute a year, compared to about 15 seconds a day for the best mechanical watch.
label: Description
content: The wristwatch was completely reinvented with all-new electronic components beginning in the 1960s. For centuries before then, watches had been mechanical--composed of intricate moving parts powered by an unwinding spring. When battery-driven quartz wristwatches first hit the market, it seemed unlikely that the new-fangled gadgets would sell. But electronic watches won over the buying public.
label: Description
content: Today, mechanical watches make up only approximately 10% of the world watch market. The components for the quartz watch emerged from independent streams of invention that stretched over nearly a century. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries scientists identified new materials like liquid crystals and discovered unknown properties such as piezoelectricity, the ability of certain crystals to produce electrical voltage when pressed mechanically. During the Cold war, researchers in defense and aerospace technologies laid the basis for miniaturizing electronic circuitry. In the 1960s, enterprising manufacturers applied the new research to the first electronic consumer products—tvs, calculators, hearing aids, and watches.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
setName: label: See more items in
content: Work and Industry: Mechanisms
label: See more items in
content: Clothing & Accessories
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Gift of John M. Bergey
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 1994.0354.02
label: catalog number
content: 1994.0354.02
label: accession number
content: 1994.0354
objectType: label: Object Name
content: wrist watch, electronic, Pulsar
label: Object Name
content: wrist watch, electronic, pulsar
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: gold (case material)
label: Measurements
content: overall - watch: 3 in x 1 1/2 in x 7/8 in; 7.62 cm x 3.81 cm x 2.2225 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall - battery: 1/4 in x 1/2 in; x .635 cm x 1.27 cm