Sir Clive Sinclair's famous Black Watch, launched in 1975, had a black display and you pushed a button to read the time displayed on a red LED. Sold as a kit, it cost £14.95.
It caught the imagination because nothing quite like it had ever been seen before. Even the advertisements were pioneering, including one of the earliest uses of 'cool' as in: 'Styled in the cool, prestige Sinclair fashion' .
However they also said: 'Easily built by anyone in an evening's straightforward assembly' and 'From opening the kit to wearing the watch is a couple of hours' work'. That was not the experience of many purchasers. The difficulties of putting the Black Watch together, and getting it to work, helped its commercial failure.
But, so stylish did it look, and so unconventional was its design, that the Swiss Horological Society exhibited the Black Watch at their Royal Horological Fair.
By then Sinclair Radionics was feeling the pinch. It had heavy R&D overheads, but no calculator business, and a failing watch business.
The company went into loss and sought financial support from the
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Ah, the Black Watch. The (Intersil? I forget) IC was so sensitive to static that walking a few feet across a nylon carpet could zap it - which is not ideal, in a watch. There were a lot of failure modes, too, including a rather engaging one where time ran backwards...
But that was just one of a huge litany of cock-ups. http://www.nvg.ntnu.no/sinclair/other/blackwatch.htm describes more...
Not the first time that the marketing ran ahead of the tech, and the tech ran ahead of production, with that company.
R
Thanks Rupert, that's fascinating. Had no idea it made such a loss - £355K! Many Happy Returns for next Wednesday, cheers, David
But he did not give up! He gave us the PC and Acorn copied his business model, and that spawned ARM, who took on the world and won.
Brilliant Chris, you're absolutely right. In those days when the UK electronics industry was dominated by big companies - Thorn, Ferranti, STC, EMI, GEC, STC, Plessey - Uncle Clive showed that entrepreneurs could succeed. In many ways he seeded the modern intellect-based, high-tech start-up in the UK.
When that came out I was at uni reading physics. One of the Profs decided it would be a good idea to use the watches to time events - he was studying EM events called 'screamers' linked to the aurora borealis at the N Pole. We heard later the watch had to be worn outside the team's thick thermal clothing - and so got very cold. At which point it gave up of course. Not a fault of the watch, more a fault in the planning! No doubt they still looked cool though.
Nice yarn Julian, thanks