The Apple Watch has been out for over two months now, and other modern smartwatches well before that. It’s no longer the stuff of sci-fi to consider using your watch to play music, control your TV, or track your fitness. But these are all things that you’ve been able to do for a surprisingly long time — well, if you maybe lived in Japan in the ‘90s and didn’t mind carrying around a bunch of Casio watches, that is.
The GMW-15, from 1989, had a graphic display to show moon phases and sunrise/sunset times.
Here’s a touchscreen watch from 1991, the VDB-1000. It included features like a phone book, organiser, calculator, and notepad.
Fitness tracking is one of the most important features in smartwatches today, but Casio’s JC-11 could monitor calories, steps, and distance back in 1991.
The BP-400, also released in 1991, was another fitness-focused watch that could monitor blood pressure and heart rate. This model was intended to be more stylish and discreet.
Some of Casio’s watches, like the RPS-100W from 1993, were less concerned with subtlety. But if you’d be okay with putting the words “FAT BURNING” on a bright pink watch on your wrist, this could have been for you.
1993’s CPW-100 used a compass to help Muslim wearers face Mecca for daily prayers.
Of all the watches Casio is showing off, this one blew my mind the most. The VivCel VCL-100 had an antenna that detected when your phone was ringing, and would vibrate on your wrist as an alert. In 1994.
Honestly, one of the most useful things I do with the Apple Watch is use it as an Apple TV remote. These Casio models, however, used infrared to control TVs and VCRs back in 1993.
The “thermo-scanner” TSX-1300, from 1994, was able to calculate the surface temperature of an object by detecting its infrared radiation.
This UV-700 from 1994 has a UV sensor and skin type meter designed to help you be safe in the sun.
This is the ABK-55 from 1995. It’s an analog watch with a raised transparent LCD that shows digital information like phone numbers.
These two watches from 1994 and 1995 could play simple multiplayer games over an infrared connection.
Here’s one area where Casio has Apple and most Android Wear watches beat — built-in GPS. The PRT-1GP came out in 1999, and was the first watch to come with its own GPS functionality.
This DBC-V50 from 1999 has a built-in voice recorder, something I actually really wish my Apple Watch could do.
1999’s HBX-100 had an infrared PC link function to transfer data to and from the watch.
The WMP-1 came out in the year 2000, and Casio says it was the world’s first wrist-mounted MP3 player.
The WQV series is a trilogy of amazing firsts. 2000’s WQV-1 was the first watch with a digital camera; 2001’s WQV-3 was the first to include a color camera; and the same year saw the WQV-10, which added a color screen.
A decade before Apple Pay, 2004’s GWS-900 G-Shock came with a contactless IC chip to make payments via Speedpass. The system was introduced by Mobil in the ‘90s as an easy way to pay for gas at filling stations, and restaurants including McDonalds also experimented with it.
2006’s MGC-10 was developed in collaboration with professional magician Tomohiro Maeda, and includes some close-up magic routines — you can “guess” the number or card someone is thinking of, for example.
And here’s where it all started. Casio’s first digital watch, the original Casiotron from 1974.
Today, Casio is focused on more traditional watches like this titanium Oceanus model. Although the Oceanus line has been discontinued outside Japan, within Casio’s home country some models in the range sell for up to ¥250,000 (over $2,000) new.
Comments
Awesome, thanks for the nice article !
By Zorak Zoran on 06.29.15 6:13am
Phenomenal. Their bright colored designs are absolutely mental and the diversity is impressive.
I do miss hardware gadgetry. PRAYER COMPASS! MOON PHASES! That classic Japanese watch feature, DATA BANK! And the best camera is the one you have on you … for spying … clearly labeled ‘WRIST CAMERA’.
The real shocker is how good the original casiotron looks. It might be my favorite square (ish) watch.
But … no calculator watch? As a person of a certain age (40) I feel a bit cheated that my favorite childhood nerd status symbol is missing from a tech blog feature about vintage watches.
By mjw149 on 06.29.15 8:52am
I had a Casio calculator watch with atomic timekeeping for years. It was hella cool.
By Ragnarredbeard on 06.29.15 8:54am
By strider2 on 06.29.15 10:25am
I loved this watch calculators
By cubeast on 06.29.15 10:33am
I had at least two calculator watches as a grade school kid in the 80s.
By RockfordFile on 06.29.15 11:45am
Still wear one of these on a daily basis for lab work, deserves to be up there
By jatk on 06.29.15 12:04pm
Also forgot to add so does Walter White and Marty McFly
By jatk on 06.29.15 12:06pm
Same….
By AkIRA_22 on 06.30.15 7:18am
Wow, these are amazing. Not sure I’d ever wear one, but still…
By endemic on 06.29.15 6:18am
I would wear the shit out of these!
By Pixelated on 06.29.15 6:34am
To be fair, actual novelty of contemporary smartwatches is their abilities to cut your useless pull-out-phone moves to about half, as experience says (by the way, it also saves phone’s battery). Also, to deal with quick communication such as messages, information alerts, mapping/directions. Most of else, indeed, is old, and only an ADDITION to what contemporary watches have.
Minor specification to this:
It was resistive screen, so you had to "force touch" it every time to get any respond.
By MXST on 06.29.15 6:34am
Theoretically, you can pay with those watches even today as Speedpass, despite its issues with security and other inconveniences, still operates.
By MXST on 06.29.15 6:58am
Why other comments (that contain totally relevant technical details behind many watches’ features) are hidden now?
By MXST on 06.29.15 7:02am
Way to miss the point.
What these old watches tell us is that FEATURES mean very little, IMPLEMENTATION is everything.
People want these capabilities, but they want them on a readable attractive screen, and controlled via a UI that makes more sense than chording three buttons in various sequences.
But, of course, we’ve had 15 years of Apple showing the world that implementation matters more than features, and half the Verge’s readership still refuses to believe that fact, so I don’t expect one more data point to change anything.
By handleym99 on 06.29.15 2:28pm
What’s your evidence that people want these features in watches? Apple hasn’t provided sales figures for the Apple Watch. Did you run your own focus group or something? Or is it simply the fact that an Apple product with these features exists that to you means people must want these features?
Digital watches sold well at first, then dropped off even as new features were added. Certainly people were already used to the UX of them by that time, though. Adding a button for VCR control or whatever wasn’t going to confuse anyone, it just wasn’t popular.
By badasscat1 on 06.29.15 3:21pm
And I want for humanity to be free of cancer, and other diseases. I want flying jetpack in form of shoes that doesn’t need refueling. I want occasional weekend trip to Mars and personal teleport… But it’s not available in 2015!
And you have to make TECHNOLOGY POSSIBLE before IMPLEMENTATION. And you need a starting point for that.
And that’s why I’m grateful to companies like Philips, TI, NEC, SANYO, Mitsubishi, etc. waaaay more than apple or google. Because those companies made modern technology possible – not making them understandable to stupid or lazy users that can’t move little finger to overcome learning curve.
By ZhoRZh on 06.29.15 7:33pm
And to further that point about implementation. Sure you could have gotten one of these watches for a bajillion dollars, but it could only do like maybe one or two of these things. Combine all of them and you start to approach the Apple Watch — and they do it much nicer.
By brian.ward on 06.29.15 10:26pm
Let’s be honest: people buying Apple Watch mostly just want to have the latest Apple gadget, no matter what it is. It’s not about features or implementation, it’s about fashion.
By wagaf on 07.01.15 3:41pm
i had the watch from the right in the first pic when i was young, it was really cool to mess around with the bar TV when the old timers where watching football ^^
By mushikipt on 06.29.15 6:36am
I did the same thing a decade later with my Palm Pilot.
Sadly that was the last time ever an IR blaster was cool.
By Omnimoak on 06.29.15 9:00am
I remember them growing up in middle east Casio was kool After so many years it still looks bad ass
By Darkzone on 06.29.15 9:53am
I was obviously really cool, as I had 3 of these – the TV IR Blaster, the touch screen data bank, and the temperature sensor.
By druoid on 06.29.15 7:01am
If you turned the Fresh Prince of Bel Air into a watch, it would look like this.
By pimlicosound on 06.29.15 7:11am
If anyone is confused, here’s the reference.
By pimlicosound on 06.29.15 11:58am