Zihotch Retro Phone Watch

It's an unusual watch that has absolutely no display, but I have a few in my  collection, and I'm blogging one today.

Today's watch is huge - possibly one of the largest I have. It was produced by the Maywa Denki company who began at the end of 1960s producing vacuum tubes. They moved on to be a company producing many unusual instruments and lifestyle products.

The Zihotch watch is manufactured by Cube Co., Ltd from Tokyo and is designed to look like an old style rotating phone dial. The watch only has the dial and a small speaker in the middle, with no other display.

To tell the time, you need to ring the speaking clock - literally! Using the dial to ring 117 (the Japanese speaking clock) makes the watch tell you the time (in Japanese). Due to this working like an old style telephone, dialling 117 takes a bit of time as the dial needs to turn itself back to the start after every digit.

There is also a morning call function (alarm) which when active you can set a time by dialing the digits of the time you need.

It was originally sold for 6,090 yen, and came in a variety of colours. I think it was initially released in 2005 (as that's when the tech blogs first seem to pick it up).