Quote Originally Posted by CFR View Post
Very interesting, Sherry.

I was too young - and the watches too expensive back then - when these "novelties" arrived to the market. I never had a chance to get one. As you know (much better than me) they started to be replaced for the more usual LCDs so, somehow, they did not make part of my interest in watches. Glad you had the generosity to post this information here. Thank you, Sherry.
The early LED-LCD story is interesting. Seiko hit quartz market first with Astron, but Hamilton Pulsar was the first completely solid-state wristwatch. Seiko never made LED watches; I think they saw the shortcomings of the LED display (poor battery life, two-handed operation, poor visibility in bright daylight), and went the LCD route. But despitetheir technological prowess, Seiko's LCD lagged behind Pulsar's LED throughout most of the 1970's in terms of function. By 1975, Seiko had barely introduced a digital watch with a date (and one with a basic chronograph), and their watches had no shock or water resistance. Pulsar watches, comparatively, had month, date, AM/PM, and they had the world's first calculator watch, which even included a memory. And the non-calc Pulsars were functionally water resistant to 100ft, and shock resistant to 2500 G.
Yet those obvious shortcomings of the LED display vs the LCD couldn't be ignored for long, and by the late 70's, the LED's short run was over.
(FYI: LED= Light Emitting Diode. LCD= Liquid Crystal Display.)

~Sherry.