Digital Watches: The Original Tech Marvel We All Forgot About

I graduated to digital watches around 1980, right when my Mickey Mouse watch started feeling a little too “kidsy” for me. My uncle gave me a Hewlett Packard digital watch with bright red LED display that flashed on with the push of a button. That thing felt like future tech strapped to my wrist. When it eventually died, my old man picked up a Pulsar digital watch for me, and I wore that one out just as fast.

Looking back, those early digital watches were straight up tech marvels. For the time, nothing felt more advanced. They were the closest thing we had to a smartwatch. As a kid, wearing a watch loaded with functions made you feel like James Bond or a time traveler.

Over the years I went through all kinds of digital watches. I loved the stopwatch functions and timed everything — how long I could hold my breath.. to how long my old man hogged the bathroom. Totally unrelated, but both were important metrics. And the backlights? I used them constantly, even when I didn’t need to.

Casio CA-53W-1CR
Calculator Watch

I also owned an insane number of video game watches like Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Q-Bert, and Legend of Zelda. Plus a couple legendary Casio calculator watches that saved me more than once in math class. Since I was seven years old I’ve owned over 100 watches, but I always circle back to digital displays. There’s just something about them.

Antiquated Digital Tech at its finest!
The Timex DATA LINK

In the mid-90s, Timex dropped one of the coolest wrist gadgets ever made — the Timex DataLink. Co-developed with Microsoft, it was basically a wrist-mounted PDA. You’d enter your notes, contacts, and reminders into a computer program, and the watch would read the data through a flashing light pattern on the monitor. It felt like sci-fi. Dead battery? No stress — just re-sync the data again.

And then there’s Casio, which completely changed the game with its G-Shock line. I’ve owned some very nice timepieces in my day, but G-Shocks hit a different nerve. They can take ridiculous amounts of abuse, they require basically no maintenance, they’re loaded with options, and Casio keeps pushing out better designs and special editions. They’ve turned digital toughness into a whole style category.
One of my absolute favorites is here:

The best watch I’ve ever owned — the Casio G-Shock
The watch that simply refused to die

I do love classic mechanical timepieces, but digital watches still hold a special place in my heart. When I find anything retro, unique, or just plain cool, I’ll post it here.