Casio Personal Planner IA-1120

Today's watch would have been a big thing for business when it original came out, but as with most of these watches, have been superceded by smartphones.

The watch is the Personal Planner watch by Casio and had a model number of IA-1120. It is an Ana-digi model with a 3 hand dial as the main time display. The digital part is covered by a semicircular LCD display with 2 lines, and 5 windows which show markers required for the planning functions. The LCD display has a lot of detail possible, with at least 14 characters being shown along the top line. The bottom line is much smaller, only having 4 digits, and normally showing the current date.

In normal mode, the LCD display shows numbers corresponding to the day letter printed around the display giving a quick view of the date for any particular day of the week (and this can be cycled forward and back to see other weeks). Cycling through the data also allows you to see if there are any events set in the planner for that day. For this planning, you can record events on the watch (i think with reminders, and a start & end time), and can assign categories to the entry (telephone number, sports, meeting, event, anniversary, appointment, travel, and private).

The 782 module that the watch uses covers the planning features, and also has stopwatch and dual time modes.

It seems to have come out in the early 90s (around 93-94), and was available in both silver and gold models. It appears to be a follow-up to the IA-1100, but gets far less hits online (-I found only 2 good links) , so may be much less common.

The watch has a Casio S-385N strap, and has the number 901A1-Y01 printed in very small text at the bottom of the face.

Tu-ka dual dial watch

I'm afraid I can't do a long post today - i don't know enough about the watch!

I wore it because I was travelling and the two dials let me have two time zones.

The watch us made by Tu-ka (possibly Tuoka), but I can't find anything about them online.

It has a dual dial with two quartz movements, and two separate crowns. The dial markings also glow in the dark for easy reading. Design-wise the watch has a really thick glass (maybe more than 5mm) on a round case, and a narrow leather strap. The back says it has a Japanese movement, and was assembled in China.

Alba Wired ViViDiGi W510

Today I'm on a mix of models, with this one fitting into two lines of watches at the same time.

It was made in 2000 by the Seiko owned brand Alba. It is part of their Wired line of watches, as well as the ViViDiGi line. I've featured watches from both lines before, but not normally at the same time.

It is another watch with the high complexity LCD display that appeared on a few watches at the time and has highly curved digits comprising of a large number of individually shaped segments (28 for showing a 9 in the hours digits). To get all of the numbers in a curved format, the parts that make up the digits are occasionally offset making the digits appear in slightly different places depending on the number. Time is shown across two lines of two digits with hours at the top and minutes below. This type of LCD design was seen on the W710 and W720 watches I blogged before (and looks very like the W710), but this watch uses a W510 module and has buttons instead of a crown for adjustments/functions. The manufacture date of 2000 also means this watch predates the others by a couple of years.

The watch doesn't have too many modes, just displaying time or alarm, and there is an el-backlight. It uses with 4 buttons for mode, light, forward, and back (for adjustments).

The full model number is W510-4A00. It uses a CR1620 battery, and A manual for this module can be found on the Australian Pulsar watch site. Thestrap is marked with the Wired name and has a part number of F1K2JZ.C

Abacus Series 2 watch by Roy Schäfer

The watch today doesn't have any hands, or a disc, and it isn't LCD or LED! It's also pretty bad for trying to get an accurate time reading on.

It was produced by the Erich Lacher Watch Company or Laco from Germany and designed by Roy Schäfer. The Laco company was founded in 1925, and specialise in high quality, high tech watches. Roy Schäfer was born in 1967, and with the Abacus, set out to design a watch with the principal of "Reduce to the max". With that, he produced the Abacus series 1 in 1999 and the series 2 shortly after.

The watch is very simple, there are no hands or normal display, just a ring with circles and dashes, and a ball bearing. Behind the face is a magnet attached to the movement, and so when the ball bearing attaches itself to the magnet, you can see the time. It is the equivalent of just having an hour hand, but the size of the ball and the small circles means that you can tell the time with enough accuracy for most purpose (same as the Chromachron I blogged a while ago). If the ball covers a circle, it is on the hour, if it just touches the edge of the circle, it is quarter past (or to), and halfway between is half past (which you probably had already worked out).

The watch design is also simple looking, but with nice touches. The crown is inset so you can't see it from above, the calf leather strap connects into the watch body, and the back is shaped and engraved, connecting with small inset screws. It actually uses a sapphire crystal for the glass, and is overall 3atm water resistant. It was originally sold for $245 (at least series 1 was, so I'm assuming that this was similar).

Columbia CT010 Basecamp

Watch number 501 is a modern and rugged looking watch from a manufacturer I've not featured before.

The watch is by a company called Columbia who are an American sportswear company founded in the 1930s as a hat company. They mainly focus on outdoor gear and have a lot of high performance clothing.

This watch is called the Basecamp (model number CT010), and was released around 2011. It is still for sale, and can be found in 3 choices of colour for around $75.

The design is chunky, with a large round case and textured buttons (and bezel). The strap is also quite robust, and the watch is 50m water resistant.

It has a large LCD display, which makes the most of the large face, fitting in 3 lines of digits, including a very large middle line for the time. The middle line is also made up of LCD segments such that it displays text for the mode you are selecting. The top and bottom lines are much smaller and show day and date. The watch has dual time modes, and multiple alarms, and a timer. There is also a chronograph (up to 100 hr) with lap display, and the ability to save data for runs and recall it with the data mode. The manual also mentions that there is a hydration alarm, which I guess is timer based.

500th Watch - Tokima Digirobo Blue

Today, my blog hits it's 500th watch (if I include a couple of pocket watches and a clock designed as a watch). For each of the hundreds, I've blogged a robot watch, and so today I'll keep up that tradition.

This watch is one of the original 1980s Tokima Digirobo models which first came out in 1983. They were released by Bandai after having been developed by the Popy Kikakushitsu company, and all of the details can be found on my Tokima Robot Watch Overview page (link).

The one I'm blogging today is perhaps the rarest version of any of the Tokima Digirobo watches. I have only seen this blue one once in the last 10 years, apart from in a 1985 catalogue. Unfortunately, this one had been stored in the sun and faded to green (but the original blue can be seen on the strap and the bottom of the box) - but it may mean I have the only green one out there ;-).

The watch has a basic 3.5 digit LCD module which has a time, date, and seconds display. The box gives much more detailed information, saying it is a "Field Electric Efficiency (FE) type nematic liquid crystal 3 1/2 digit display", and has a 32768Hz tuning fork type quartz movement.

As with all of these models, the watch head is released from the strap with two clips, and then pulling out the robots feet releases the arms too.

Alba Aqua Gear V701 Purple

It's a very early post today as the rest of the day will be rather busy taking photos.

The watch I've chosen today is by the Seiko brand Alba, and was released sometime around 1994. It is part of their Aqua Gear line of watches, which were a range of water resistant fashion watches - this one is 20 bar resistant (approx 200m). Alba had several Gear lines of watches including Hot Gear, Field Gear, and Aqua Gear (examples from all of these can be found elsewhere on my blog).

The watch is a 3 hand dial movement using a V701 quartz module (the full model number is V701-1Y20), with a crown at the 4 o'clock position. It has a rotating bezel, but this is mainly for decorative purposes. The entire watch face glows in the dark for easy night use (- I've tried to get a picture, but it's a little dark).

It has a very colourful design in purple, turquoise, yellow, orange and white, so is pretty noticeable. The strap is also printed with the Aqua Gear name (and has a part number of FAV4FB 20).

The catalogue number was APBT075, and it was originally sold for 9,000 yen.