Future Tech Timepieces of
Science Fiction
The first rule of futurism is that there are no facts about the future, only fiction.
Yet science fiction is an ideal place to explore our desires, fears, and fantasies around new technology without, well, having to actually build anything. Science fiction inspires us, challenges us, and delights us with what could be. Consider the wristwatch, a form factor that has embodied tomorrow’s technology in more than 50 years of science fiction. Through countless films, TV shows, comics, and books, the wristwatch that can place calls, connect to computers, and perform other decidedly un-watch-like functions has represented the distillation of everything we’ve always thought would be cool about the future. These high-tech timepieces pack the most cutting edge technological advancements of the time — from radio in the 1940s to TV in the 1960s to video conferencing in the 1980s—into the most convenient, familiar, and personal form factor. The Moto 360, with its smartphone connectivity, voice control, and myriad apps, does that too. But unlike George Jetson’s wrist-worn videophone, the Moto 360 is real. In celebration of the future arriving a little early, here’s a look back at the history of the future of smart watches:
Dick Tracy was a keen-witted, hard-bitten cop who also happened to have an incredibly hip two-way radio watch. His space-age-looking wrist radio, first introduced to the comic strip in January 1946, is as iconic as any bit of spy hardware that’s come before or since. Over the years it got upgraded to allow for video calls and even evolved into a wrist-worn computer, allowing the indefatigable investigator to communicate and coordinate with his Chief. Maybe it’s just the way he holds it up to his face, but that watch still looks cool to this day.
“TV sets the size of postage stamps will soon be worn on the wrist, each with a personal dialing number,” reads a line from the April 17 issue of Closer Than We Think — a 60s futurist newspaper comic strip illustrated by seminal techno-utopian artist Arthur Radebaugh. In it, predictions abounded about all manner of future conveniences, from space stations to push-button schools to mailmen wearing jetpacks, and yes, of course, high-tech watches. A true sign of its time, this one features a telecast sent directly from the moon to a couple on the beach.
The Jetsons are the icon of space age futurism. As a send-up of 1960s American middle-class values transposed to the year 2062, emphasis was placed on the domestic conveniences that were popular at the time. Creators Hanna-Barbera were optimistic about the longevity of their shows — in one episode, a character named Kenny Countdown uses his wrist screen to watch the billionth rerun of The Flintstones.
In a comic strip in the November 1962 issue of the Boy Scouts of America’s magazine Boy’s Life, a college reporter visits Bell Laboratories to get a tour of the future of telecommunications. The last of the sometimes prescient, sometimes cringe-worthy examples he’s shown is a “more distant” concept of a telephone contained in a wristwatch. At the time this probably seemed as far off as a moon base does to us now, yet the big telecommunications companies were already contemplating the personal communications revolution we’ve experienced over the last 25 years.
Secret Agent Maxwell Smart had a number of high-tech gadgets hidden in strange places, including a phone in his shoe. Sometimes though, he didn’t bother to lift his loafer and instead spoke into his wrist radio to raise Agent 99 and Chief at CONTROL headquarters.
Like the cars he drives, James Bond’s choice of watch has been a major part of the series’s laser-sharp fashion sensibilities and tech appeal — From the first books by Fleming to the latest big screen blockbuster, Bond’s Rolex and Omega wristwatches have been one of the many things that made us jealous of him.
But it wasn’t until 1965’s Thunderball that his inventor partner Q gave him a watch that did more than tell time, in this case fitted with a Geiger counter. From then on, his wristwatches have been stuffed with features including buzz saws, magnetic bullet deflectors, remote detonators and steel-cutting lasers (below, from 1995's GoldenEye).
The MI6 agent’s watch may have achieved its pinnacle in the GoldenEye video game for N64, serving as the home screen for the whole experience and setting off countless moments of pure gadget envy in players around the world. You can now have that watch face on your Moto 360 courtesy the Secret Agent Watchface app.
The anticipation for wrist-worn tech didn’t wind down as the 70s rolled in, especially with the establishment of commercial communications satellite networks. In addition to phone calls, now the coming smart watches would be used for mobile voting and saving lives, at least that’s according to the 1979 British children’s book The World of the Future: Future Cities. They even went out on a limb and predicted what the devices might be called: “Ristos.”
Star Trek is the standard bearer for predictive technology in popular culture. The original series’ hand-held Communicator is often cited as a direct inspiration for the first flip phones in the 90s, but by the time Star Trek: The Motion Picture came around they’d upped the fashion factor, shifting from bulky squawk boxes to sleek wrist communicators. Featuring a tiny screen atop a slender CPU with buttons, they looked more like slimmed-down computer terminals than high-tech wristwatches.
Carrying a suaveness rivaled only by Han Solo himself, Lando Calrissian put forward an easy confidence and a keen sense of fashion. The square watch he sported served as little more than an accessory during most of his screentime, but when Darth Vader and his stormtroopers took over Cloud City it proved its worth as an inconspicuous communications device. When the going got rough, he used it to ping his trusty cyborg Lobot.
Michael Knight’s wrist-worn communicator kept him in close touch with his artificially intelligent Trans Am KITT. Knight also used his watch to take photos and conduct local scans for KITT to analyze. The prop was actually based on an actual AM radio watch.
Inspector Gadget’s spring-loaded shoes and extendable limbs are all fine and good, but it was his precocious niece Penny who had the stuff we really wanted. In addition to basically predicting the tablet PC with her “computer book,” she always wore a stylish red watch that was her equivalent of the utility belt, able to make video calls to her dog Brain, scan rooms, and shoot a laser beam. Go go gadget trivia: Don Adams, the actor who played Maxwell Smart, was the voice of Inspector Gadget!
Even the most cold-blooded interstellar big game hunters have to check the time. The wristband worn by the Yautja of the 1987 sci-fi flick could summon a spaceship, activate a cloaking device, switch between heat and motion vision, fire plasma bolts, and even set off a small nuclear bomb.
Minority Report is often credited with being visionary in the gestural computer interfaces imagined for the film yet Tom Cruise’s futuristic watch in the film is unusual as a sci-fi wearable in that it’s used only for keeping time. As Cruise’s character John Anderton realizes he’s been caught by his own pre-crime system, he sets the timer for when the murder is supposed to take place in just over a day, setting up a reminder to viewers as to how much time is left before the film’s climax.
Forget wearables. The sci-fi thriller starring Justin Timberlake features implanted timepieces that tick off how much time the “wearer” has left to live. Visible to anyone nearby, it also led to a division of society based not on who has the most money, but who has the most time left. And you thought checking your watch was stressful when you’re running late.
Now is when the science fiction becomes fact. The Moto 360, a watch for our times.
