SPOILER ALERT!

The Time Computer

After some period of each having independently worked to develop a commercial solid-state wristwatch, Electro-Data of Garland, Texas, and Hamilton Watch Company of Lancaster, Pennsylvania signed a contract on December 1, 1969, to jointly develop “the world’s first digital watch” [Sauers; Klein, Electro Data].

At that time, John Bergey had been working as “director of research” [Intelligencer, May 7, 70] with “Hamilton’s watch division.” He “and other members of the original Hamilton team integrated and controlled all functions, from design and engineering to assembly” of the first prototypes, “introduced to the public by Hamilton at a May 6, 1970, press conference [Sauers].

‘The watch wasn’t ready and we all knew it wasn’t ready. We had three prototypes that would each run for maybe 15 to 20 minutes before stopping, so we took turns ducking behind a curtain, making sure we always had at least one that was running.’

At the time, it was reported that “Hamilton had a net income of $1.9 million … on revenue of $98.6 million in 1969” [Kessler, Jun 30, 70]; lost $23.6 million against sales of $56.6 million in 1970; and lost $2,414,000 on sales of $46.8 million in 1971 [New Era, Mar 29, 72].

Hamilton Watch Company reorganized in November, 1971 — ultimately taking the name HMW Industries, and subordinating “the ‘old’ Hamilton Watch Company” (ie, watchmaking business) to the position of subsidiary [Sauers].

Then-child Hamilton debt relief came by way of Omega watchmaker-associated Society Suisse pour l’Industrie Horlogere, SA (SSIH), which “acquired 17 per cent of the stock … in a complicated transaction that could give the Swiss control of Hamilton watchmaking business and its name in three years” [New Era, Nov5,71]. SSIH exercised this option in 1974 and acquired majority interest, making Hamilton a Swiss brand from that point forward. Today that parent is known as Swatch Group.

On March 14, 1972, a corporate filing was made with the State of Pennsylvania to create “Time Computer, Inc” [Pennsylvania]. Importantly, what was initially referred to as “the Pulsar Division” was no longer under or within the watch division (read, “Hamilton”) as of June 4, 1972 (if not prior), but, rather, set directly beneath HMW itself.

Meanwhile, Electro-Data had separately became involved in an October of 1971 deal that proved catastrophic to its business, ultimately forcing them into bankruptcy on April 12, 1973.

In his Time for America, author Don Sauers argued, “Contrary to the belief still held by many Hamiltonians that the Pulsar was a flop, the company might have gone bankrupt without it.” He cited a 1973 Annual Report statement that credited Pulsar as having become “one of the leading profit contributors for HMW ….

Pulsar sales totaled $17 million in 1974, nearly double 1973, and profits more than doubled. By 1976 sales had risen to $21.6 million and profits to 2.9 million. But in 1977 the [subsidiary] lost $5.9 million on sales of $13.5 million. 

Dennis L Klein of Old Pulsars summarized the approximate production of aggregated watch models by year.

  • 1972 at 3,500
  • 1973 at 50,000
  • 1974 at 100,000
  • 1975 at 120,000
  • 1976 at 150,000
  • 1977 at 10,000

Based upon first appearance of the P2 on set for Live and Let Die filming, the James Bond character must have been among the earliest of early adopters for this new tech.

On June 30, 1977, HMW Industries “announced the sale of its Pulsar solid state watch business to Rhapsody Inc, Philadelphia,” including “the brand names, Pulsar and Time Computer, and the entire solid-state watch inventory [New Era, Jul 1, 77].

Under the terms of the agreement, Rhapsody will continue to distribute the Pulsar line of solid-state watches. … Rhapsody (also) will be licensed by Time Computer Inc to produce solid-state watches under Time Computer Inc patents ….

Time Computer Inc will continue as an HMW subsidiary but its activities will be devoted largely to providing service to Pulsar watches already sold and to the Rhapsody inventory.

Time Computer Inc retains its portfolio of patents and patent applications covering the design and manufacture of solid state watches under its patents. [The subsidiary] will also continue its program of licensing other companies to produce solid state watches under its patents.

Rhapsody was a privately-owned company that had in 1976 posted seven million dollars in sales. On March 29, 1978, local newspapers reported that HMW had posted a $6.4 million loss for the twelve-month period ended that January prior, “caused primarily by a sharp downturn in Pulsar watch sales” [New Era, Mar 29, 78]. During the fourth quarter of 1978, Rhapsody sold all of its interests in Pulsar to watchmaker Seiko. While the purchase price was not disclosed, “rumors place the transaction in the $3 million range.”

Over the course of the next decade, the corporate identity of HMW effectively disappeared as it was subjected to outside takeovers, the second of which saw it sold as part of an “$86 million cash deal” [Intelligencer, Oct 12, 83; Mekeel]. Initially, remnants of its Time Computer Inc subsidiary had set up a “Service Center” to perform repair and warranty work; Rhapsody-Pulsar wristwatches were included in this arrangement, although the warranty period on their sales had been reduced to one year [Klein, Time Computer].

In 1982, the Service Center was transferred to private ownership, then closed in 1988.

Select Horology

A central thread of this history began with work at Lancaster, Pennsylvania-based Hamilton Watch Company, originally established in 1892.

In 1966, employees John Bergey and Dick Walton were focused on military aerospace research into electronic fuse timers that could provide “switching with very low power usage” [Sauers]. When potential for application of the resultant underlying technology to wristwatches was seen, Mr Walton “was transferred to the watch division where he initiated the electronic watch project,” and Mr Bergey came over to serve as director of Watch Research and Development.

Separately, the Texas-based Electro-Data company, founded in 1966, “had developed a prototype clock with an LED [“light-emitting diode”] dot-matrix display … made from off-the-shelf components …” [Klein, Electro Data]. Company president George Thiess, himself “presented his concept to Edward Marcus of Neiman-Marcus in Dallas and was assured that the product had great market potential.”

In 1967, RCA developed “MOS integrated circuits, which reduce energy consumption substantially [Doensen; Sauers].

All the components needed in a quartz watch can now be sorted in a watch case.

Hamilton showed prototypes of “the first fully electronic wrist watch in the world” to the international press and on The Tonight Show in 1970. Researcher Pieter Doensen has credited George H Thiess, founder of Electro-Data as “the most important instigator for the development of this watch.” His company produced its electronic module.

The LED displays originated from Litronix, the reed relays from Hamlin [sic] USA and the red crystal from Corning Glass, New York USA. The case of the prototypes had been designed by the sculptor Ernest Trove of St Louis …. This prototype of the Pulsar had 40 different integrated circuits and a battery of 4,5 V which had to be recharged every six months.

Although overtly labeled “Hamilton,” only “watches with the name ‘Pulsar’ came into production.”

In October of 1971, Hamilton Watch Company director of Watch Research and Development, John M Bergey, presented a technical paper titled, “Design Considerations for a Solid State Timepiece,” at at Eurocon 71 in Switzerland.

A limited run of 18-karat gold digitals came at the tail-end of that year, with full production of the Pulsar model P2 (including the stainless steel version associated with James Bond) in August of 1972. First- and second-generation control modules failed in the field, forcing replacement by those that had been “secretly developed” by Hamilton.

At this point in The Quartz Revolution, market share of that new technology had yet to register. But Time Computer watch sales that had launched with “instant, spectacular success” had “plummeted,” resulting in “huge financial losses” by 1977 [New Era, Jul 14, 77]. Mr Bergey attributed the turn to “a ‘tidal wave’ of competition from the semiconductor industry.” Mid-1977 advertising by the company challenged “badmouthing” of its Pulsar timepieces.

… 95 per cent of the owners of their watches are satisfied with battery life; 88 per cent are satisfied with the watch; 71 per cent don’t mind pushing a button, and 95.5 per cent who bought a Pulsar since 1972 still have it.

Looking back on that time from a vantage point of fifteen years later, Don Sauers saw this demise differently. He cited “the public’s gradual realization that it was not really crazy about digital time.

Most of us, then and now, are more comfortable with ten-to-five than we are with 4:50. We can comprehend 4:25, but when time leaps over the half-hour mark we want to know how much time remains before the next hour, not how much has elapsed since the last. Bill Clear, a Pulsar veteran still associated with Hamilton, believes that digitals will someday realize their full potential. He maintains that today’s children, exposed to computers as early as kindergarten, are far more digit than dial minded.

It seems apparent, in the bright light of hindsight, that Hamilton took up arms in the wrong revolution. They failed to perceive the quartz revolution, not the digital, would be the most significant in the history of the industry ….

The last time a wristwatch with digital display appeared in a motion picture on the wrist of the James Bond was in A View to a Kill, 1985. (A large, five-digit wrist-worn digital timer was featured in an early trailer for the 1989 Licence to Kill.)

En Route to 007

Prior to Live and Let Die, James Bond wristwatch acquisitions appear to have been largely if not exclusively cash-and-carry, as, for example, with the David Middlemas purchase of a Chronograph for the 1969 On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, two films prior.

In a 2006 book intent on laying out “the creative process behind the James Bond phenomenon,” Barbara Broccoli was quoted as having said that her father, the late Albert R Broccoli, “was the man who created product placement in films [Bouzereau].

He realized the connection between having products shown in the film and using them to promote the film’s release.

When the credits rolled in early July 1973, two watchmakers were named: Rolex and The Time Computer.

At that point, the solid-state wristwatch that appeared in Live and Let Die had not been produced by “the Pulsar Division” of HMW Industries — as the business unit had previously been known, formally. Neither was “The Time Computer” (nor “Pulsar: The Time Computer”) a division of HMW, as designated in print advertising that included an appearance in the November 13, 1972, issue of Time magazine. Rather, it was at that point designated as a subsidiary, hence proper reference to its legal, discrete, company, name in Live and Let Die credits. Advertising for the P2 had been updated to reflect this for its run in the May 7, 1973, Time.

Double-0 Watch Status

The Time Computer became a James Bond watchmaker through the premier of Live and Let Die on July 5, 1973.

Observations

In 2010, Dennis L Klein lamented reporting that Pulsar had come from “Hamilton’s ‘Watch Division'” on his Old Pulsars website. He went on to characterize that position “tainted history.”

Insights

My first James Bond watch was an all-but-new Live and Let Die Pulsar that I regularly wore starting in the early- to mid-1970s.

From the get-go, I never knew it as anything other than a product of Hamilton Watch Company. Papa Deaton vouched for the watchmaker by reference to its work as a military supplier during World War II. Retail store managers with expansive Hamilton wristwatch displays would invariably admire it as one of their own when I’d stop in with the P2 on my wrist later on into the decade of its manufacture.

But I was struck by the passion with which “tainted history” was argued on Old Pulsars when I revisited the first solid-state timekeeper en route to James Bond Watches 5.0, beginning in December of 2023.

There’s no question that this series of solid-state wristwatches has spawned from Hamilton Watch division DNA and that its developers (both inside and out of the firm, proper) consciously leveraged this fact when they introduced it to the public. On top of that (at the risk of suggesting proof of a negative), I haven’t found evidence of any sort of segregated “secret experimental room” within the walls of Hamilton (à la Ford Piquette Plant) intent on insulating Pulsar watch thinking and development from old school wristwatch tech in the main.

When co-inventors John M Bergey and Richard S Walton filed application for U.S. Patent number 3,672,155 on May 6, 1970, “Hamilton Watch Company” of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, was listed as Assignee. Period.

The November 1971 reorganization came about with a definitive if not strategic cleavage of the solid-state wristwatch development team and all-else HMW. A “comprehensive plan” was rolled out “to give operating units greater autonomy by setting them up as subsidiary companies, rather than as divisions of the company” [Sauers]. At that point, then, Hamilton and Pulsar were consciously, distinctly and legally separate in fact; and this was so in service to ensuring no uncertainty with regard to their finances.

Dennis Klein devoted a great deal of real estate on his website to underscoring the importance of this approach.

This jived with what Don Sauers observed in 1992, regarding the cusp of the reorganization. Pulsar was clearly not a part of the Society Suisse pour l’Industrie Horlogere purchase of Hamilton Watch stock, nor subject to the later exercised option that gave SSIH majority control. When John M Bergey discussed his solid-state watch patent with The New York Times in 1972, the name Hamilton was never referenced.

HMW retention of the Pulsar business unit appears to have been transparent from the SSIH perspective as well. Omega Constellation reference GF 396.0812 was run by Time Computer module caliber 102, as its own caliber 1600. And in 1977, the Pulsar deal was first offered to and rejected by Hamilton-cum-SSIH before it went to Rhapsody.

Neither Hamilton Watch Company nor any sort of “Hamilton Watch Division” ever produced a Pulsar wristwatch for retail sale.

The earliest such timekeeper was the P1 “limited edition,” particularly identified by model 2800 as “world’s first solid-state wristwatch” [Klein, (P1); New Era, Nov 16, 72]. It was introduced after the HMW reorganization and subsidiary structuring, and likely after corporate paperwork for Time Computer, Inc, was filed with the State of Pennsylvania. The first mass-produced solid-state wristwatch was the “P2,” introduced that fall of 1972.

Pulsar P2 model 2900 watches were later provided for use during the last days of production on Live and Let Die (ie, in 1973) which acknowledged Time Computer as watchmaker.

Related Page

— Dell Deaton
Updated: September 4, 2024
January 13, 2024

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