The Hamilton Electric 500 is announced at a press conference. It is the first battery-operated electric wristwatch and the first watch you never need to wind.
The 500 was made by the Hamilton Watch Company of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, which began developing the timepiece in 1946. It was still not completely ready eleven years later, but the company, feeling the pressure of competition and wanting badly to be the first out the door with this innovation, called the press conference and went into production anyway. It was an instant hit at a time when progress was everyone’s watchword, so to speak, and all eyes looked expectantly to the future. And the 500 was, briefly, the watch of the future, with its ultramodern design and cutting-edge technology. But fundamental problems with the watch soon became apparent.
Battery life was relatively short, for one thing, so while winding was no longer necessary, frequent battery replacement—in some ways a more arduous chore—was. And newer doesn’t always mean “better,” which the 500 proved by being prone to failure, making it less reliable than the standard winding watch.
The watch’s hands were driven by a complex wheel train. By the late 1960s, quartz-movement watches—which had many fewer parts—had arrived, and Hamilton ended production in 1969. The 500 is now a highly prized collector’s piece.—TL