The Sinclair Radio Watch

The post this week features another watch from our archive: a Sinclair radio watch from 1985. Before talking about the watch I'd like to give a bit of context, especially for those outside the UK:

Sinclair was one of the most exciting companies of my childhood - for most of the 1980s they produced amazingly futuristic products, things that had only previously been seen in Science Fiction. Their products ranged from the first pocket calculator, to the first pocket television, to the first (only) recumbent electric tricycle.

They were an extraordinarily brave company, prepared to take enormous risks on developing new products and bringing them to market. I really don't think there has ever been anyone else to match them for this level of corporate bravery (or foolishness - inevitably they went bankrupt).

The drive and vision of the company came from the eponymous (Sir) Clive Sinclair. Sinclair's genius was to marry the nascent electronic technology to a strong sense of design and brand. Sinclair was a talented engineer, but he really excelled at carrying a vision through from idea to reality. I think this is the most interesting aspect of Sinclair and something that is often lost in the carping about his many follies.

Enough background - the Sinclair watch was released in 1985. I don't remember it from my youth and indeed the company had more pressing concerns than promoting it: The watch was released at the moment when the Sinclair empire was collapsing. This was principally due to the failure of the C5 electric vehicle, on which they had basically gambled the company. Indeed this watch was produced in very low numbers because the company effectively went bankrupt and was sold to Amstrad who had little time for such fripperies.

In it's own unique way, I think this watch is a miniature masterpiece of 80s design. The detailing on the industrial design is exquisite. It was done chiefly by Dagfinn Aksnes who was the product design manager at SRL (and if Sinclair had been as well run as Braun, would probably be as famous as Dieter Rams is now!) You can read an extremely in depth story of the development here.

The watch is very distinctively of it's time. Probably its most notable feature is the articulated sections, that are covered by the rubber bellows. These have an extremely satisfying feel - they move back and forth in a very controlled, smooth way. Of course this is only partly watch - the bulk of it is actually radio: the middle section is the speaker and the upper section the tuner. The aerial for the radio is concealed within the strap, but apparently this was less than functionally ideal as you had to hold your arm in the air to maximise reception. Finally the battery is held in the fastening of the strap.

These days we're blasé about miniaturised electronics and especially personal audio players, but these developments have only been possible by building on the work done by pioneers like Sinclair. Sinclair had made miniature radios previously, but this was their smallest radio (indeed in 1985 it was the smallest radio in the world).

Currently the watch that I own is not functioning - I need a little clear time to have a look at it in depth and figure out what needs doing. I also need to find a way to replace the neoprene strap that seems to be rather rapidly disintergrating!

Aomori Ice Clock

 

In February this year I was invited to travel to Japan to work with local craftspeople in Aomori in Japan. As part of the work I was a participant in a workshop run by Nobumuchi Tosa from Maywa Denki. Tosa-san is a hero of mine and I've met him several times before, dating back to the first time I travelled to Japan in 2002 (for the CG Arts exhibition in Tokyo).

The workshop was conducted in Japanese, of which I speak very, very little so most of it was mysterious to me! To be honest I think even to the Japanese speakers it was rather mysterious - we were introduced to Tosa-san's free-association way of working.

The experience was rendered extra strange because Aomori was under several metres of snow - you can see in the photo below that the snow came up above the level of the windows (although this is somewhat exaggerated because the snow slipped off the roof and formed drifts against the edge of the building).

 

Anyway by a very circuitous route I found myself on the second day of the workshop (prototyping day) needing to produce some sort of clock combined with the river thames. Because of all the snow, I opted to use frozen water and produced a clock made of ice.

 

I ran the clock as a sort of performance for the camera for just over one hour - basically tending the ice-hands, moving them around as necessary and adding more ice when the hands melted too much. The first video shows the laying out of the clock face and then the second shows the clock in motion.



The workshop was organised by Okada Tomohiro of Creative Cluster. Later I'll post some information about the other pieces I made while in Japan. 

As a coda you can see below the building of the clock face:

Ernest Borel 1950s Cocktail watch

Another watch from our archive - this watch dates from the late 50s, early 60s and features an mesmerising psychedelic display driven by the seconds hand. A disc on the seconds hand rotates above a static pattern to make a dizzying optical effect.



One of the things that I like about this watch is that it's extremely of its time - somehow it captures the playfulness and invention of the 50s. As a watch it's also a fantastic and quite unusual design with transparent case back and a dial that sort of merges into the case.




I brought this watch several years ago (quite shortly after we released our first series of watches). I was interested to see how the disc-type hands had been used by other watchmakers in the past and how you can make optical effects by printing on the discs. Our watches use a quartz (battery) mechanism and feature a momentary seconds action, rather than the smooth sweep that is characteristic of a mechanical watch. This means that the optical effects we can trigger (for example on The Decider) are more on-off, rather than the smooth change you see on this watch. The design of Love knows not was certainly influenced by this watch - the idea of an image (or text) gradually coming into phase and then fading out is the same.




One final thing that I like about this watch is the way that the timekeeping is a secondary function - the red markers for hours / minutes are definitely subservient to the overall design / optical effect.

You can find a variety of Borel watches for sale here

More info about Borel watches

You live you learn

We get asked to make special watches by customers fairly regularly. Unfortunately both because of the long timescale involved and because of the cost, it's rarely something we actually follow through. Also if i'm totally honest I don't really like the idea of doing it - generally someone starting a conversation with "I've got a great idea for a watch" is my nightmare!

However we did on one occasion produce a unique piece: my cousin wanted to make something special for his Father's 70th birthday. We worked things out early enough and he obviously benefited from the Mr Jones family discount, so we were able to make it happen.

I thought that he wanted something that said basically "Happy Birthday Dad", so I mocked up a version of this (with slightly gritted teeth). I was nicely surprised when he said that what he really wanted was to place a phrase that his dad uses all the time on the watch hands: "You live, you learn". This seemed a far more interesting watch and also in much more sympathetic to our brand.



As a note the case for the watch in the sketches was intended to be the production case for the fourth series. You can see there is a kind of cut through on the lugs, these would have been made as four separate pieces and screwed into the back of the main case.

Unfortunately the production of the case turned out to be way more expensive than expected. So at short notice I did a revision of the Series 3 case (Cyclops, Everyday Special), with slightly thicker lugs with more pronounced ends. When we received the samples (including this watch) I didn't like how it turned out - it felt too chunky and crude and I didn't like the curve of the bezel area. For this reason we opted to produce the fourth series in the third series case. So this watch has both a unique face and a unique case!



We kept two pieces of this watch as spares and my Uncle has the other one (and as far as I know enjoys wearing it!)