Meet The Very First Smartwatch: Behold The HP-01, from Hewlett-Packard

Louis Westphalen

HODINKEE

Throwback To The Past: it is 1977, quartz watches are still less than 10 years old; it's the year Star Wars hit theaters for the first time... and you are actually looking at, not a piece of science fiction, but what is nothing less than the most technically advanced wristwatch ever produced. Whether you love or hate what electronics have meant in watchmaking, there's no doubt that the development of electrical and electronic timepieces, from very early electrical pendulum clocks of the early 19th century to the first quartz clocks of the 1920s, to experimental electromechanical watches in the 1950s and '60s, changed horology forever.

Meet The Very First Smartwatch: Behold The HP-01, from Hewlett-Packard

Today the word "smart watch" is one we all know, but this was the very first of that breed, from nearly 40 years ago. Whatever you may have thought the earliest smart watch was, I bet you were not expecting this marvelously geeky instrument (especially not from a vintage enthusiast who covers your weekly Bring A Loupe!). Let's review, from Hewlett Packard, the intriguing and amazingly sophisticated HP-01.

Meet The Very First Smartwatch: Behold The HP-01, from Hewlett-Packard
Cover Of Hewlett-Packard Magazine Entirely
Dedicated To The HP-01

You probably fondly remember the Casio calculator from your youth – well, the HP-01 could be considered its mastermind ancestor, reaching an unprecedented level of complication, back in 1977. Its technical feast has to be put in perspective: imagine fitting three batteries, and six chips in a wristwatch some 30-plus years ago! In truth, the HP-01 was not the very first calculator watch ever produced – sorry about that Wikipedia, Calcron and Pulsar deserve that honor for their respective 1975 launches – but the HP-01 was undoubtedly smarter, much smarter! Or as its advertising puts it: "With the HP-01, you can compute and then count down the time it takes for a command to reach a spacecraft several hundred million miles away." This sounds both insanely geeky and cool so let's understand how this beast actually works.

Meet The Very First Smartwatch: Behold The HP-01, from Hewlett-Packard

As Hewlett-Packard boasted at the time: "The HP-01 is a digital electronic wristwatch, a personal calculator, an alarm clock, a stopwatch, a timer, a 200 year calendar...and yet it is more than all of these."

Meet The Very First Smartwatch: Behold The HP-01, from Hewlett-Packard
All of the integrated circuits and three discrete components for
the oscillator are combined in a hybrid circuit on a five-layer
ceramic substrate.

It is actually the HP-01's ability to combine all its functions that makes this watch truly unique. It indeed allows you to integrate metrics such as time, speed and cost into your calculations, and perform the kind of computations NASA needed a dedicated room for in the late 1950s. For instance, you could find the required travel time to a specific point, or discover on which date a specific process would end. Add to that a very advanced calculator, and you were sure to never flake your math exam. Finally, you could use a recall function with associated data, much like an agenda; one ad specifically mentions an arranged call to your wife with the phone number then displayed on the screen – a reminder that cell phones were not around at that time so those logistics were slightly harder.

Meet The Very First Smartwatch: Behold The HP-01, from Hewlett-Packard
The ceramic substrate containing the integrated circuits is capped,
and the display, crystal resonator, and frequency trimmer are
added to complete the HP-01 module.

Not only that. If you are of a certain age you may remember something called Reverse Polish Notation. This was a way of entering numbers and operators that saved memory space but required some mental gymnastics as you would include operators after numbers. To get three plus four, for instance, "3 4 +" would be entered. It made for speedier calculations but was not intuitive, and this was the first calculator from Hewlett-Packard (wristwatch or otherwise) to use standard algebraic notation, rather than RPN.

Meet The Very First Smartwatch: Behold The HP-01, from Hewlett-Packard
Exploded and cutaway views of the HP-01.

Now that we have covered its mind-boggling capabilities let's focus on how the HP-01 from a practical, engineering standpoint. The 7-digit screen has the bright red LED display that were popular in the 1970's – heck, even James Bond was wearing one in 1973 in Live And Let Die, the same movie in which he got a very practical 5513 with buzz saw and magnetic-field generator soon offered at Phillips. To compute all its functions, it featured a 28-button keyboard; you could access to the main six functions with a tap of your fingertip. For the remaining 22 actionable buttons you needed a stylus, much like a perpetual calendar if I might offer the comparison. Interestingly, HP engineers had found a very astute way to always have the stylus handy, and avoid some homemade and destructive replacement: this stylus is ingeniously fitted into the bracelet buckle (a clever feature today's makers of complicated watches might consider).

Meet The Very First Smartwatch: Behold The HP-01, from Hewlett-Packard Meet The Very First Smartwatch: Behold The HP-01, from Hewlett-Packard

The HP-01 was guaranteed to be precise up to 30 seconds per year, an impressive performance for a quartz movement with digital display at the time, especially when you consider that even today, the average quartz watch is rated to around 15 seconds +/- per month. It even keeps the correct time during a regular battery change as one of its three batteries is solely dedicated to the circuitry, and as such lasts much longer than the two others powering the LED display.

Meet The Very First Smartwatch: Behold The HP-01, from Hewlett-Packard

Miniaturization obviously has its limits and the HP-01 definitely qualifies as bulky on the wrist (it's a pretty massive 40 mm × 45 mm × 15 mm) but it nonetheless radiates an old-fashioned charm. It is not on the light side, weighing a respectable 170 grams or 6 ounces. At the time it was introduced, it was sold for $695 on its steel bracelet – more than a Rolex! The HP-01 was never really a best-seller, probably a bit too complex for its own good. Additionally, the LCD technology rapidly proved its edge over LED – notably on the energy consumption front – and took the market over, including James Bond's wardrobe where a very cool Seiko fax machine appeared in the Spy Who Loved Me, in 1977. The HP-01 ceased production in 1979 and never found a proper successor despite some early prototyping with LCD display.

Meet The Very First Smartwatch: Behold The HP-01, from Hewlett-Packard

The HP-01 we featured was recently sold by Iconeek here; other HP-01 regularly show up on eBay, be extra sure that the one you are considering is still functioning properly unless you feel like a complex restoration.

hodinkee.com

You may have to register before you can post comments and get full access to forum.
EMS supplier