Did runners in the 70's/early 80's have digital watches?

Digital LED watches were very expensive and out of reach to the common consumer until 1975

I bought a stainless steel digital watch around 1977-78. It cost $75, and was the first and only product from the Sharper Image at the time. For those who read Runner's World back then it was advertised by a man named Walt Stack who was an older fellow who had a pretty incredible daily workout routine. It was kind of heavy and broke a lot. My dad found it hilarious that I kept having to send it back for repair. I still have it, but it hasn't worked in many many years. As for keeping track of mileage, if I ran a new course I would go drive it and watch the odometer. Made me late to school a lot.

And almost everything was in black and white too, just check the photos from that era. Color wasn't really widespread until the early 80's. I'm sure glad they invented color.

malmo wrote:

By 75/76 they were already down to 10 bucks, Before that most of us had analog chronograph watches with separate timing dials. On the track someone usually carried a stopwatch.

Somehow I knew who wrote the above before peeking @ the name. Did a little digging in my closet, malmo and the earliest Runner's World ad I found for a Casio digital was July '78 - the F-100 for $39.95. As I recall they were the first plastic watches which made them cheaper and resisted water. Don't recall if I got one in '78 but no later than '79. Between '78-mid 80s, Casio produced quite a few different watches, attracting Timex as a competitor.

There was also an ad for an analog chronograph that is described above for $32.50.

Back to the July '78 RW: members of the US World Cross Country team - GArbogast, CVirgin, GMeyer, JWells, BRodgers & MRoche. Rodgers would beat Wells by 2 seconds @ Boston 3 weeks after the World Cross meet.

fgfg wrote:

Digital LED watches were very expensive and out of reach to the common consumer until 1975

LCD

A digital display simply shows the time as a number, e.g., 12:08 instead of a short hand pointing towards the number 12 and a long hand 8/60 of the way round the dial.

The first digital mechanical pocket watches appeared in late 19th century. In the 1920s the first digital mechanical wristwatches appeared.

The first digital electronic watch, a Pulsar LED[10] prototype in 1970, was developed jointly by Hamilton Watch Company and Electro-Data. John Bergey, the head of Hamilton's Pulsar division, said that he was inspired to make a digital timepiece by the then-futuristic digital clock that Hamilton themselves made for the 1968 science fiction film 2001: A Space Odyssey. On April 4, 1972, the Pulsar was finally ready, made in 18-carat gold and sold for $2,100. It had a red light-emitting diode (LED) display.

Digital LED watches were very expensive and out of reach to the common consumer until 1975, when Texas Instruments started to mass produce LED watches inside a plastic case. These watches, which first retailed for only $20, reduced to $10 in 1976, saw Pulsar lose $6 million and the Pulsar brand[11] sold to Seiko.

Most watches with LED displays required that the user press a button to see the time displayed for a few seconds, because LEDs used so much power that they could not be kept operating continuously. Usually the LED display color would be red. Watches with LED displays were popular for a few years, but soon the LED displays were superseded by liquid crystal displays (LCDs), which used less battery power and were much more convenient in use, with the display always visible and no need to push a button before seeing the time. The first LCD watch with a six-digit LCD was the 1973 Seiko 06LC, although various forms of early LCD watches with a four-digit display were marketed as early as 1972 including the 1972 Gruen Teletime LCD Watch, and the Cox Electronic Systems Quarza.[12][13]

Timex Datalink USB Dress edition from 2003 with a dot matrix display; the Invasion video game is on the screen.

From the 1980s onward, digital watch technology vastly improved. In 1982 Seiko produced a watch with a small television screen built in, and Casio produced a digital watch with a thermometer as well as another that could translate 1,500 Japanese words into English. In 1985, Casio produced the CFX-400 scientific calculator watch. In 1987 Casio produced a watch that could dial your telephone number and Citizen revealed one that would react to your voice. In 1995 Timex release a watch which allowed the wearer to download and store data from a computer to his wrist. Some watches, such as the Timex Datalink USB, feature dot matrix displays. Since their apex during the late 1980s to mid 1990s high technology fad, digital watches have mostly devolved into a simpler, less expensive basic time piece with little variety between models.

There were LED watches but they used so much power they ran down the batteries too quickly. I got my first Casio in 1984- can't remember what I paid but I'm thinking it was a little less than $20. Had the 4 functions - time/alarm/chrono/stopwatch. I also recall it was waterproof to 25 Meters depth.

"How did they track interval/recovery splits or tempo runs within a whole run?"

Intervals: your coach had a stopwatch and yelled out splits. You did the math in your head. Coach timed the rests, or we just did 1/2 lap or full lap jog.

Digital watches were pretty common by the late 70's. The cheap ones did not do splits, but you could do it all in your head for intervals, races, distance runs.

You figured you miles pace using a calculator (after you finished, of course). A 10k is 6.21 miles. Your time of say 30:30 is ((30*60)+30)/6.21 = 4:54.7 per mile. Most of that I did not even need a calculator fir. I could just convert my time into seconds in my head. I knew all the metric distances to miles by heart. In fact, I knew within a few seconds what my pace was without a calculator. I'd just used that to be exact.

Tempo runs, in my circles, were not big. We did distance runs, intervals, fartleks, and "time trials". However, we rarely ran time trials. They were faster than a tempo run would be. Not flat all out, but pretty close to race pace.

That was probably a "runners" watch with fancy splits.

I recall cheap casios in about 76/77. They were all black. Had 3-4 buttons. You could get the date, time, and a stopwatch (without splits, just start and stop).

I remember the buttons starting to wear out after a while. You might have to repeatedly hit the stop (or start) button to get it to work.

Those were the days...

I got my first LCD watch in 79, but for timing I used an analog watch with a movable bezel ring, which went from 0 to 60. If the start time was 6:05, I 'd set the "0" of the bezel to the 1 on the watch dial. When the minute hand reached the 1 and the second hand was at 12 - exactly 6:05 - I'd start running. My running times were accurate to the second. The distance of the course was pre-measured by car or bicycle. Or, in the case of a new run, we'd just guess the distance. I used this approach until the mid-'80s.

Huh ? There were a million Japanese digital watches, digital calculators, analog rice cookers at stores in Saigon in the late 60s.

You just made me feel even older than I feel...thanks...

"How did you tell time back then old timer?"

But I'm pretty sure the tv's were in color by then [and, yes, TV use to be not in color...]

I remember reading somewhere that the New York City marathon was the first to start placing mile markers along the race. The reason was given that they noticed that some runners were wearing “newfangled” digital watches and they could keep track of their mile splits if they had the miles marked. Don’t know when that was though.

NYs home but it ain't mine... wrote:

I remember reading somewhere that the New York City marathon was the first to start placing mile markers along the race. .

If you believe that whopper, I've got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.

curious cat wrote:

I was looking at marathon photos from the 70's of Bill Rodgers and Co. and realized they weren't wearing watches. Were digital watches around at that time? Was someone giving splits in races? How did runners keep track of their training? When did runners start wearing digital watches, and did performances start to improve with that advent?

I had one in 1978. I bought it at the Marine PX for $85.00. It was a deal. It was digital and the numbers were red. It did have a stop watch, but it was hard to read. I like it because it the newest thing to have.

I had a digital Star Wars watch in like 1978-79. Had a red display on black. Not sure I was much into running at 7-8 years old, but I do remember the digital display. Man, I loved that watch!

A Japanese calculator company named Busicomm is credited with creating the Microprocessor Industry. Busicomm invented the first microprocessor in 1969, called the 4004. Busicomm was so swamped with other projects in Tokyo it farmed out production to an overseas startup chip company named Intel. The rest is history.

Like Fisky, until I got one of the black plastic jobs, I had an analog watch with the rotating bezel that you rotated so the zero aligned with the time you started. Most of my routine training runs were over routes whose distances I knew well, from driving them or riding my bike around them.

Intervals were trickier, especially in waning light of autumn. I was young though, and the numbers on my watch and the sweep hand (as well as the others) were faintly luminous. I can remember one set of 8X800m which my partners and I were trying to do in under 2:40. Checking my watch on the run in the dim light after first lap of the opener, I imagined I saw 90 rather than 80, so we picked it up. Apparently I had seen a 70, as we finished in 2:23 or some such. Let's say the remaining seven were...difficult.

Photos of me in '77 Portland Marathon show that telltale skinny black plastic band on my left wrist with 26 splits on athletic tape around it.I remember in '78 Boston comparing the times on my watch with official (and unofficial) mile markers en route.

curious cat wrote:

I was looking at marathon photos from the 70's of Bill Rodgers and Co. and realized they weren't wearing watches. Were digital watches around at that time? Was someone giving splits in races? How did runners keep track of their training? When did runners start wearing digital watches, and did performances start to improve with that advent?

I had an analog watch that had a stop watch built into it.

Even more amazing, was that my grandfather had given it to me when I was like 12... Used until the first casio with timing came out, and then the 30 lap split casio...then the triathlon watch etc.

Some times I'd run with a stop watch.