Steve alicia is here with a seiko message. Watch from the mid 90s, i managed to find one of these new inbox on ebay and had to pick it up and the reason why i wanted to pick this one up and i can actually do a review of this device, despite it being so old and I’M, pretty sure the feature feature’s not working anymore is – i actually had one of these when they were functional back in the day. I was a 14 year old with this. My first smart watch and we’re going to talk about how it worked, but you can imagine just how cool i was. I was pretty cool, we’re gon na get to that in a moment. So this is the seiko message. Watch essentially how this worked was it picked up where you were in an area, so there were radio towers. I think it just leased space from radio stations and depending on where you were, what tower you were nearest to that’s. The information that you received over the air, so this is the box very, very 90s, but let’s go ahead and open it up because then you get some of the features and some of them i’ve remembered and some of them i’d forgotten, but it just jogged. My memory so relatively normal, looking like any sort of other casio or sport watch from back in the day, but let’s take a look at the different features that it had lottery numbers so it’d give you.
I believe it was pick 3 pick 4 and pick 6 at the time for whatever your locale was atomic time, which is one of the things that i believe probably should still work today. I don’t, i don’t, think that the radio signal for that has changed very much over time. One i had forgotten about that was very interesting and i remembered it after this jogged. It was the ski report, so it would give you a ski report snowfall and the pack and all the rest of it for your particular area, personal messages. That was basically someone could call in much like a pager system back in the day and give you a message and someone would type it in and send it to your phone, or it was basically beeper functionality that you could do through an automated system, just beep Them your number and then they’d know to give you a call back. I believe there was a fee for that. I think it was a a few bucks a month to get the beeper functionality weather forecast. You got temperature, you got next day’s weather you got rain. Was gon na sunshine all the rest of it market closings? So you got the dow jones, you got the nasdaq and you got the s: p. 500. You got highs and lows: uh change for the day and all the rest of it. And then you got sports scores and that was also related to your locale as well, so, if you’re worth in radio range.
So, even though i wasn’t a jets or giants fan and i wasn’t a yankees fan or a nor mets fan that’s the scores that i got so i got, you got yankees, you got mets, you got rangers devils islanders, you got jets and giants and you got Knicks and nets new jersey nets at the time, not brooklyn nets, so let’s go ahead and open this up and see what the deal is still. Oh, uh it’s one of these packages, all right, we’re gon na, have to cut into this all right. We’Re gon na cut away because we need to cut into this and then we’re gon na. Take a look at the watch itself, see if the battery’s still operational and see if anything would still work. Okay, we got it open. That was actually embarrassingly simple, but we’re gon na go ahead and go through the books, real, quick and see what you got with. So this is the service that i was talking about it’s the message watch service package, so you got unlimited local, personal messaging and paging. Precision time adjusting to atomic time 36 times a day to keep you nice and accurate information services, which is all the stuff we talked about and message retrieval, so they gave you basically a number that you’d call, and this is how to do that. You could have a custom greeting much like an answering service and all the rest of it. Seiko of amer communications of american beaverton oregon i’m, going to call that number, if not go to that website and see if there’s anything still active.
So this has had a proper sizing on it. You could actually change the band or chain, not change the band, but you could change the sizing of the band how it works. This is basically the reception, fm local fm radio frequencies that’s. Exactly how i remembered it. Working the time and focus that in there local stuff, 24 hour, clock alarm, beeper information services – oh, this is what it looked like so yeah. These are the sports scores that you’d get the team the score and the season standings. I forgot to give you the record too, the dow jones you get the change, you get the volume you get, the closing the weather forecast right there, high low and percentage of chance of precipitation and the ski report, so inches of new snow base, snow level, current Temperature, it was just, let me tell you something for the mid to late 90s. This was pretty neat. Not gon na lie so that’s all the stuff that you got books wise, so let’s take a look at the actual device. Oh it comes right out of there. I remember this clasp because they were the same. This was slightly different than mine, mine, wasn’t silver. It had black, but this clasp was a pain in the butt uh it’s, one of those ones that you really had it. You know up and down, but the reasoning for it. You see that metal strip. This is what i remember you’d have to.
This would be a pain to clean out a lot of times. This is the receiver. This is what would help pick up that fm transceiver signal and then basically the back and nothing else, so this is deader than dead. I was hoping there’d be a. I don’t know why there would be a pull tab. I really don’t know why there would be so let’s see if there’s anything here there was a light button, take a look and the lock button and then message in time. So let’s go ahead. I doubt this is going to boot up i’m going to go ahead and get a battery put in this and we’ll come back and we’ll do something well i’ll at least let you know uh what it’s able to do these days. Let’S go ahead and push both buttons. Maybe something i’d be shocked if a 25 year old watch battery still work being, as these were on, probably on display no it’s just about as dead as i can. I remember, but these were. It was a premium device for that. It was a little bit more premium than your regular sport watch, your regular casio nice metal body, metal construction here, a decent feeling band. It was something that you definitely wouldn’t mind wearing and i remember it being terribly respon terribly useful and the cool part, and the part where i become cool is there was a retreat that we had to go on at the beginning of high school and no one.
But – and this is listen – this is 98.99, so cell phones weren’t that prevalent for people – 13, 14, 15 anyway, but they didn’t allow and they took them away and it was the baseball playoffs and i remember the yankees were playing the a’s. I believe it was whatever it was. It was the alds and nobody could get any information about the game because they didn’t allow any radios they didn’t allow phones, they didn’t allow anything, and nobody was telling anybody about the game and there couldn’t be anything and everyone’s going nuts, but they never suspected that Somebody they didn’t even know this. Probably technology existed, the chaperones are the thing, but they never suspected that somebody would be wearing a radio communication watch back then, and i was able to get everybody the sports scores and was a hero, super cool, steve, delicious from day. One, but if you then this this developed this technology technology, basically developed into microsoft, wristnet, i had one of those as well, where you can then choose the frequency of the updates, the teams that you wanted. But this was the beginning of all the smartwatch stuff, at least for me. I understand there were data, watches and personal planner, watches and calendar watches before this, but the smart watch as far as getting outside information from over the air for me started with this bad boy right here. The seiko message watch, which was super cool i’m, going to love, powering this bad boy up and seeing, if i’m, going to call that number i’m going to go with the website, see if anything’s still left there because it’s just over the air radio stuff, i mean The same fm bands are still here today, i’d, be curious to know if it’s still even got atomic time, because i can’t imagine that it wouldn’t.
That would be something, but if it requires that service or something perhaps not but either way i’m going to try to get it activated in some form or fashion and see what we’ve got. But if you had one of these, if you had an early message, watch or beeper watch your paper, pager watch go ahead and leave a comment below if you’ve made it.KiPNqo5-yEU
