No Longer Made: Seiko TV Watch From 1982

In 1982, Seiko watches in Japan introduced the world’s first wristwatch with a builtin liquid crystal display television screen. They called it the Seiko TV Watch, and today, I go handson with an original piece and the set of items that came with it. The Seiko TV Watch may have been just another oddity in the form of a wristworn gadget, but the device captured the public’s attention and was part of a larger fascination people still have with wrist gadgets. The wristwatch as a form of communication device really started much earlier with things like the Dick Tracy radio communication watch and continues today in the form of modern smartwatches. Starting in the late 1970s and moving into the 1980s, the wristwatch became an epicenter of consumer technological innovation. The cost of quartzbased movements had fallen steeply, ambitious technology companies in Japan were fervently trying to engineer “the next big thing,” and the Japanese were the kings of miniaturization at the time. So, why not try to put a television onto a wrist?