The history of the smart watch, part 3 – SPOT, PDAs, and bluetooth

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So, after moving my blog entirely from My Opera to a self-hosted WordPress install (I’m not done migrating the older entries, I’m partway through 2006’s entries there), I think it’s time to continue this series.

Last entry, I left off in the mid 1990s, with pager watches and the odd databank watch. But, for the most part (with a couple exceptions in the mid 80s), watches haven’t actually been “smart” yet.

We’ll begin where we left off, and continue with the second start of true smart watches – watches with data storage, local processing power, and arbitrary code support. Continue reading “The history of the smart watch, part 3 – SPOT, PDAs, and bluetooth”

The history of the smart watch, part 2 – storage, programmability, multimedia, and communication

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Yesterday, I covered the history of the smart watch from the 1940s slide rule watch, to the 1970s calculator watch, and dipped into the 1980s with musical and gaming watches.

However, while some of those watches had processing ability, it was very limited, not programmable, and transient – once you were done processing data, you got back to the clock functionality, and whatever you were doing was gone. But, with Japanese electronics makers competing, some real innovation started. Continue reading “The history of the smart watch, part 2 – storage, programmability, multimedia, and communication”