Orient vintage LCD Comment Alarm G751101

Today, I'm blogging one of the old LCD watches from my collection.

This watch is by the Japanese watch maker Orient. The Orient Watch Company were started in the 1950s, but are now a subsidiary of Seiko Epson. They are most known for their mechanical watches, but made some LCD models in the 70s/80s. Looking online, the LCD models were quite solid and rather expensive looking, so I think they produced more high end luxury LCD watches.

This model has a model number of G751101, and I've only found one more of these online (an online sale asking for $650), so I think it's quite a rare model. The design is classic vintage LCD, with a black face and octagonal shape. It comes with an Orient stainless steel strap with a part number of ZA 002.

The unusual part is the LCD which is unlike any others I've seen on a watch of this age (except for the early smart watches). The digits on this LCD are made up of dots rather than the usual segments. This makes the LCD look quite modern as the digits are more curved than usual. Looking at how the digits change, this dot pattern is actually from a dot matrix array. This array is because of a feature in the name (which I've not found yet due to some temperamental buttons) - Comment Alarm. What i guess is that you are able to add a 4 digit text comment to the alarm you set, with the top left and right buttons setting the comments (or it's just you can leave 4 digit comments as a reminder). As well as the alarm and the comment input, the watch also has a stopwatch mode. Above the digits, there are markers for the modes, the day of the week, and the am/pm marker. 

I don't have a date for the watch, but I'd guess it's early 80s (circa 1982) as this is when the Seiko smart watches first came out.