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The Hamilton Watch Company had already collaborated with Stanley Kubrick to develop digital clocks and futuristic watches for 2001: A Space Odyssey. Whilst the watches had analogue movement, the clocks - eventually cut from the film - were fully digital. 
Hamilton ran with the idea, and in May 1970, on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, they unveiled the future of time: the Hamilton Pulsar Time Computer! America had just landed on the Moon; now it would conquer the personal digital future.
Hamilton Pulsar chose to use light emitting diodes for their watch display, just like many calculators did in the early 1970s. It was a proven technology, unlike its newer rival the liquid crystal display. That would prove to be a fateful decision later on...
So in 1972 the Pulsar Time Computer launched to a rapturous reception: it was so futuristic! A quartz timebase signal fed a set of signal counter chips that controlled five LEDs illuminating a row of seven-segment displays. It was like having Apollo Mission Control on your arm.
But... The LEDs were so power hungry it could only show the time if you pressed a button. It also cost more than a Rolex: $2,100! And you had to buy it from Tiffany's. But Richard Nixon had one. So did James Bond. Pulsar was the new status symbol.
