Seiko’s snappily named SDGA001 digital watch

Launched in 2010, this heavyweight in stainless steel was an attempt to make digital watches fashionable again

IN 1970, American watch firm Pulsar launched the first digital watch, the Time Computer. It had raced to get the new watch ready, terrified that Seiko would get there first. The Japanese firm had already trumped the rest of the world in December 1969 with the first quartz watch, the analogue Astron.

With its usual foresight, Seiko had bet that the LED (Light Emitting Diode) technology that Pulsar chose had too many problems, so planned on leapfrogging it in favour of the superior LCD (Liquid Crystal Display). Seiko was right. LEDs gobbled batteries, you had to push a button to tell the time and, in direct sunlight, you couldn’t see the display. LED watches were trendy and prestigious – even President Ford wanted one for Christmas – but they were also finicky and bothersome.

So Seiko’s first digital, launched in 1973 as the 06LC, had an always-on LCD display. In true space-age fashion, you could control the watch from its three-button fascia, using the buttons to set the time and date and switch between functions, not that there were many.

LED initially led (sorry) the field but LCD won the race. By the mid-1980s, though, digitals of both flavours were a bit naff and nerdy, the horological equivalent of cartoon character socks. So when Seiko turned up to Baselworld in 2010 with a new, high-end digital watch – the SDGA001, with a £1200 price tag – rivals wondered where Seiko had stashed the Crimplene slacks and Hostess trolley.

This new watch resembled the 06LC, and all those other digitals, about as much as a Honda E resembles a 1972 Civic. For a start, its face was completely different. That’s because the SDGA used an active matrix electrophoretic display. Yes, another acronym: EPD.

An EPD is formed of individual, microscopic, fluid-filled containers, each with a mix of black and white particles. Pass a charge through the containers and what’s on the screen changes. A negative charge brings the white particles to the surface, to show on the display. A positive charge sends the black particles scurrying to the top. Once there, they stay put with no need for more power. That’s why your Kindle display stays on even when the battery is dead.

So EPDs are also very power-efficient, and they are also much finer than lumpy old LCD segments. The SDGA001’s 80,000 pixels give a resolution of 300dpi. This matrix of tiny dots allowed Seiko to move away from the traditional seven-segment digit display and show almost anything on the watch’s screen.

Even on the standard model, owners could have the time in white-out or black-out numerals or even as the faces of playing cards. When switched to the ‘world time’ mode, the display showed a world map with the timezone’s key city highlighted. The rare Star Wars SDGA went even further with detailed pictures of the characters. With typical Seiko humour, the

Star Wars watch’s world time mode used a graphic of the Death Star and a Tie Fighter.

The SDGA has a quartz movement – the 32,768Hz cal. S770 – so, according to Seiko, it keeps its own time within 15 seconds a month. But it also picks up a daily radio signal from your local caesium atomic time clock at 02:00 each day. As you’d expect, there’s a transmitter in Japan. There’s also one in Germany, one in the USA and one in the UK at Anthorn. If you’re determined (or insomniac) enough, you can even watch your watch resetting itself.

If, for whatever reason, the 02:00 signal doesn’t work, the watch diligently waits for another at 04:00. It checks the reference against its own timekeeping and adjusts to match. As the signals are accurate to around a second every 1000 years, being late is now firmly down to you. The three independent alarms mean you don’t even have that excuse.

The SDGA was launched with a re-issue of the Astron, and Seiko was determined that it would rival its sibling for quality. It weighs nearly 140g with its stainless steel case and bracelet and an almost unscratchable sapphire crystal. It’s solar-powered, has no moving parts apart from the buttons, and is waterproof to 100m. In theory, you never need to take it off, have it serviced or change the batteries.

People are still sniffy about digitals, but the SDGA could yet rehabilitate the genre. It is, after all, the first premium digital watch since the 1970s. It might also turn out to be the last.

‘THE SIGNALS ARE ACCURATE TO A SECOND EVERY 1000 YEARS, SO BEING LATE IS NOW FIRMLY DOWN TO YOU’