Few people have heard of it, yet many consider John Blankenbaker's KENBAK-1 to be the first commercial personal computer.
Casio Still Sells Telememo Watches?!
By James Grahame
Casio is a weird company. Not only do they have a vast product line, they sometimes keep products alive for decades. A case in point is this Telememo & Schedule calculator watch. It's basically unchanged since the late 80s (well, except for a switch from orange to green sidelight).
One has to wonder if someone at Casio catastrophically miscalculated demand, resulting in a warehouse filled to the brim with mid-80s microchips and watch cases. Still, this offers a brilliant buying opportunity for those of us who are unnerved by the pace of technological change.
In exchange for under $50, they'll give you a data bank watch that holds up to 50 name/phone number combinations (as long as none of your friends have more than 8 letters in their name). There's an 8-digit calculator that can do currency conversion (I wonder how many French Francs there were to the Ruble in 1988...). It even tells time and includes a stopwatch. Yes, your phone can do all of these things, but it doesn't wrap around your wrist. So there.
Mercifully, the auto calendar is correct until the year 2099. That means Casio still has a few decades to unload these antiques on future generations who might regard calculator watches as mysterious and very cool devices from the distant past.
