Pretty Neat Digital Watch
A wrist-worn temporal chronometer constructed from vibrating quartz and liquid crystal. Regarded by ape-descended bipeds as an extraordinarily neat idea, and by the rest of the Galaxy as bafflingly primitive.
Guide Entry: Primitive Digital Watch
"Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.
Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea."
— The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Introduction
The Pretty Neat Digital Watch is a wrist-worn electronic timekeeping apparatus recovered from the now-vaporised planet Earth in Sector ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha.
Galactic Perplexity & Cultural Obsession
To cosmopolitan galactic civilizations—who routinely traverse eleven-dimensional probability space, dine at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, and converse via telepathic fish placed in the auditory canal—the concept of strapping a vibrating quartz crystal and a seven-segment liquid crystal display to one's wrist is viewed with bemused pity.
When field researchers from Megadodo Publications originally surveyed Sol III, they catalogued an extraordinary paradox:
- The indigenous human population were almost permanently unhappy and stressed about the shortage of small green pieces of paper.
- Yet they felt immensely comforted by wearing small black plastic devices that made a high-pitched beep at the turn of every hour.
Hardware Specifications
- Oscillator Core: 32,768 Hz synthetic quartz tuning fork oscillator, mechanically counting fractional subdivisions of a planetary day.
- Display Matrix: Dual-layer reflective Twisted Nematic (TN) liquid crystal display capable of displaying four digits and an unconvincing colon that blinks once per second.
- Micro-Illuminator: A microscopic green-yellow incandescent bulb that illuminates approximately 12% of the screen while exhausting the battery in under forty seconds.
- The Hourly Beep: An immutable piezo-ceramic alert that sounds punctually during solemn funeral services, hyperspace jumps, and crucial moments of diplomatic silence.
- Water Resistance Rating: Stamped "Water Resistant 50M", though exposure to a damp morning in Cottington or a spill of Nutrimatic tea induces permanent vapor fogging beneath the acrylic face.
Interstellar Collector Value & Improbability Crisis
Following the demolition of Earth by Vogon Constructor Fleet No. 42 to make way for a hyperspatial bypass, authentic Sol III digital watches have become sought-after relics among collectors of primitive anthropoid oddities. An itinerant traveler in possession of a functioning digital watch with its original stainless steel expansion band can easily barter it on Ursa Minor Beta for three bottles of Old Janx Spirit or an emergency towel patch.
During Arthur Dent's rescue by the Heart of Gold at an improbability level between $2^{100,000}$ and $2^{75,000}$ to 1 against, great ugly bulges appeared in the fabric of space-time and Arthur's body softened and bent in unusual directions. As the hallucinated seafront at Southend melted away, his legs drifted off into the sunset, and his left arm came off too, the single frightening thought that struck Arthur in the midst of losing his limbs was:
"Hell, how am I going to operate my digital watch now?"
— Arthur Dent, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Chapter 9
Sub-Etha Navigational Compass
A liquid-filled pocket compass calibrated not to ordinary planetary magnetic poles, but to the supermassive black hole at the Galactic Core or the nearest Sub-Etha relay.
Electronic Thumb
A short squat black rod, smooth and matt with a couple of flat switches and dials at one end. Emits sub-etha pulses that flag down passing interstellar vessels for hitchhikers.