The Seiko Receptor - A Watch Dinosaur
posted by: martback
The Receptor was a message watch produced by Seiko in the United States allegedly taking four years to develop. It was introduced on July 16, 1990.
When it was introduced, the Seiko Receptor was a breakthrough in personal communications but not in package design.
The full packaging set included the watch, manual, service area maps, service specifications and cards with number codes to share with friends who will be calling your Receptor. Missing from the packaging pictured is the individual card with phone and ID numbers.
Seiko Communications Systems, Inc. in Beaverton, Oregon managed the receptor watch communications. The operation have since been discontinued.
Picture credit http://www.beans-around-the-world.com/beaverton.html
The Receptor was simply a pager in a wristwatch, so while the general concept (pagers) wasn’t revolutionary at the time, fitting one into a wristwatch was. As you can see from the manual excerpt below, the system relied on a central message server which connected to the Receptor watches using a FM based radio system. Communications were one way. The Receptor could receive but not send messages.
Service was carried through dedicated transmitters, so coverage was limited. Upon release, coverage was restricted to the Seattle and Portland areas, but Seiko had plans for nationwide US coverage. I have not found any indication that the service was ever expanded outside the initial areas.
In addition to the message services, the Receptor also provided informational messages in which slightly cryptic displays (due to the Receptors 16 character size limitations) updated you on the important events of the day. Based on the selection of services provided, we can surmise that Receptor customers were primarily skiing stockbrokers with a gambling habit and interests in local sports.
After paying $255.00 for the watch, buyers then paid a $12.50 per month fee for the service subscription. This seems like a small amount for a product that allowed you, in Seiko’s words to “Stay in Touch with Life. ” I’m particularly fond of the two first paragraphs in the manual which state: “Being on the go and in the know can actually leave us feeling disconnected and out of sync. But do not fear, help is at hand; Your SEIKO RECEPTOR MessageWatch can help you sort through frenzy and find balance - in the work, world and at home.” Remember, this was in 1990, where very few people had even heard of a mobile phone.
I think Seiko did a decent job with the design of this watch, especially the early metal versions. The Receptor has a bit of a 90’s feel to it with its slightly streamlined look and the grey/metal colour combination.
The designers must have worked hard to fit a FM receiver and watch into this relatively small case. The watch fits well on the arm and does not feel large. Weight is about 150 grams. Battery life is said to be about one year which probably also was an excellent technological achievement.
In order to improve reception, the Receptor had an antenna built into the strap!
The strap antenna required a bit of tweaking when putting the watch on, and Seiko thought the procedure needed an extra page in the manual. It is actually the same clasp as a lot of Seiko watches with metal straps from the 1970’s. If the strap fitting was too complicated, one could always call customer service for help. I wonder if Seiko gets clasp fastening questions nowadays?
As with all dinosaurs, the Receptor eventually became extinct. Seiko shut down the FM service in Seattle at the end of 1999 making the Receptor watch today just an ordinary watch with a cool history.
I found no information on how many Receptors were sold, but because they are not uncommon on eBay, my guess is that there were at least a few thousand produced. I see many of them come up for sale unused so I think sales must not have been as high as expected.
December 28th, 2008 at 11:27 am
Hi Martback,
I enjoyed reading about a watch that many of us eBay searching Seiko collectors have probably seen numerous times without probably ever knowing much about them. These message watches remind me of the Microsoft Spot watches which were released under various manufacturers a few years ago.
My father had one that he really enjoyed but sadly I think that like the Seiko Receptor, his watch will soon be a dinosaur as although Microsoft is continuing to support the technology, the watches have been discontinued.
People who ski must be an important demographic for manufacturers. I was speaking to someone a number of years ago who was doing some work on the Microsoft watches and I was told that they were looking into providing ski resort information (conditions, trail maps etc) into the Spot watches.
With the proliferation of features available in Cell Phones and Ipods today, I just don’t think we’re going to see watches like this anymore unless someone can figure out a good way to integrate the phone into a wristwatch. Regardless, they are interesting models and worthy of residing in serious collections.
Thanks for posting!
petew
December 30th, 2008 at 9:33 am
HI Martback,
I owned a Dutch version of the Message watch. It was a great looker. The case was black with bright yellow lining. I believe the buttons were bigger. I had a TV guide and news subscription. Unfortunately the watch was stolen at a burglary back in 1998. I have never seen this model for sale somewhere again. I bought it in a sale for about f75.- (€35.-). It was at that time not really cheap, but I belive the watch original price here was around f200.-.
Cheers,
Sjors
December 31st, 2008 at 6:28 am
Hi Sjors,
Was that message watch you had a Seiko, and if not, do you remember what the brand was? It sounds interesting.
petew
January 1st, 2009 at 12:38 pm
Hi Petew,
Mine was a Seiko Message Watch. It looked like this one:
http://img170.imageshack.us/img170/3448/message1ok5.jpg
I have not taken pics of it (I simply didn’t have a camera around that time). All I remember there were yellow accents.
Kind regards,
Sjors
January 2nd, 2009 at 1:22 am
UPDATE TO ARTICLE
Thanks to Sjors lead, I did some more research.
After the introduction, Seiko dropped the Receptor label and renamed the service MessageWatch. Coverage was extended to more areas in the US (I have been able to verify coverage of Southern California, including Los Angeles, New York City and Las Vegas at the end of 1997) and sales of the watches were made through paging companise such as Airtouch. Services were also established in Taiwan and the Netherlands. The US service, was discontinued on December 31, 1999, presumably due to the cost of securing Y2K compliance. The service in the Netherlands continued at least until January 1, 2002. Another interesting piece of information is that the watches had their own IP-address but I have found not evidence of Internet connectivity.
There was also MessageWatch poetry developed, which had its own restrictions due to the technical limitations;
* No words can contain letters that cannot be drawn unambiguously in upper or lower case without diagonals (i.e., no M, W, X, Z, V, or K);
* No stanza can be longer than 16 characters long (including spaces)
* No single word can be over 8 characters long;
* No series of words can be such that they need to split a word over the line-gap between the 8-9th and characters;
(Source: http://mako.cc/copyrighteous/20050113-00)
/ martin
January 2nd, 2009 at 4:15 am
Hi Martin,
Thanks for you additional info. Those individual IP Addresses probably explains how messages could be sent to individual watches. A phone number was included, so other people could text message you (like SMS service). If I’m correct you could sent a limited amount of codes (like “phone home”, etc).
Cheers,
Sjors
January 23rd, 2009 at 12:56 am
The Seiko MessageWatch operated on FM Broadcast Station 19 KHz Subcarriers. The watch contained a custom synthesizer controlled FM receiver and a custon Digital Modem to receive data ( and a custom protocol deframer and clock/user control processor). To achieve good coverage, messages were sent on several radio stations in a precisely staggered way so the watch could have multiple attempts (time and space divirsity). It would receive for a short time every two minutes or so. It’s ID would determine the message slot (timing). Multiple watches shared slots, so latencies could get high at times.
The watch actually auto-resonated the wrist band antenna to the frequency it would be receiving before every reception attempt.
It achieved 1 year battery life on a single lithium coin cell, so in that respect it was absolutely revolutionary. The circuits and electronics were designed with power consumption and sensitivity foremost.
Its transmission protocol was synchronized precisely to WWV, so the watch was accurate to 10ms.
Before the company was shut down, a third generation watch was built with a pixel based display that could do banner style scrolling. It was much thinner than even the second generation. The metal housing and new strap design were finally up to seiko standards. I was always dissapointed by the Industrial look, especially after so much effort (love?)was put into the protocol, message distribution system (IBM based Clearing House), sub-carrier modulators, and the watch itself.
Some think it failed because watches are jewelry, some think the FM Broadcast Infrastructure was too expensive and difficult to fill in.
Be happy to answer any questions. Is there a market for the 3rd generation prototypes?
January 23rd, 2009 at 1:06 am
Oh, a little history:
The watch was invented and designed by AT&E Systems in Portland/Tigard/Beaverton, Oregon. Seiko partnered with AT&E and bought the engineering group and technology after AT&E ran through its money like water.
February 15th, 2009 at 3:40 am
Hi designguy, thanks a lot for the extra information. Working for a Swedish mobile phone systems company, the technical aspects are always of extra interest to me. Even if an FM based system seems to be a dead end, there should be a lot of interesting things in the control and messaging software systems. The value of prototypes is always very hard to determine, but they are usually to some extent linked to the production watch price, i.e. expensive watch, expensive prototype. As the Receptor is among the cheapest Seikos available compared to their introduction price, prototypes will probably also take a price hit. A post of the prototypes and some information would be highly appreciated though. Also, any extra exposure for the Receptors would be worth its while. Already, if you search for Seiko and Receptor, this article usually comes up top on Google.
/ martin
December 18th, 2009 at 3:12 pm
Hi,
Just to let you know that I’ve had two MessageWatches over here in The Netherlands. One like the one you showed with limited character display (16 digit limited number of characters), but also a next generation which I think was never sold in the States and had the capability to show 42 characters (the whole alphabet, numbers and characters) messages on a dot matrix screen.
I just know that I feel so f***ed by Seiko stopping the message service I promised myself never ever to buy any Seiko watch again and ever since I keep myself to that promise.
I have my first messagewatch on movie receiving a message while I was on Holiday in the Los Angeles area by the way. It was fun to actually see it working outside the Netherlands. By the way, they (minimail, the Dutch message operator for the Seiko MessageWatch) had a test on the Euro Disney park in France and wanted to introduce it in France as well. However, they did not get permission to do so, but for a short while one was able to get a connection and get your MessageWatch synched to the atomic time when you were around the Euro Disney area in Paris.
Martin Dekker