By Joe Berk
You’d think with my old-age eyesight and need for bigger letters and numbers I’d wear the Citizen watch you see above more often, but the fact is I don’t. I bought it years ago when I was a yuppie, and I wore it a little, but it just hasn’t had much wrist time in the last couple of decades. But it still works well, and it’s still got those big numbers. I need those now.
The Citizen uses their E101 solar-powered quartz movement and like all Citizens, Seikos, Casios, and Orients that use a quartz movement, it is phenomenally accurate. I’m talking in the range of seconds per month. I never thought I’d need a watch that accurate, and I probably don’t, but I enjoy having one. It’s one of the reasons I almost never wear an automatic (i.e., mechanical) watch anymore. They just don’t have the kind of accuracy I’ve become accustomed to.
Another feature on the watch you see here is the lume. It’s incredible. At night, the numbers and those big hands jump out at you. Other than having a backlit Casio or Timex, the lume on this watch makes it one of the easiest to read in darkness I’ve ever owned.
Once this watch is charged after being in the light, it keeps running for a long time. If I leave it on the shelf for months, it still keeps running. Evidently, room lighting is enough to keep it charged. When it does run down, it doesn’t take very long for it to come alive when it sees sunlight again.
What surprised me is that even though I’ve owned this watch for more than 20 years (it’s probably closer to 30 years), you can still buy this model at a relatively modest price. The exact colors you see here are no longer available, but the basic watch design is, and to me the new colors are just as attractive as the old. Here’s the same watch in a brushed stainless finish with a canvas strap. I like this look a lot.
I’m tempted to buy the watch you see above, but I already have plenty of watches. You can buy the above watch on Amazon for $184, or better yet, from Jomashop for a paltry $124. That’s a hell of a deal.
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I haven’t worn a watch from my machinist background for 50 years. They can get caught in machinery and pull you into things that hurt.
Anyways the new version of your watch has numbers on the outside of the face going up to 24. What do they tell you ?
Im stuck on 60 sec equal 1 min.
Just wondering.
I’ve worn a watch every day of my life since I was a kid. I feel naked if I don’t have a watch on my wrist.
The numbers going up to 24, of course, tell you military time. Going from 1600 to 1700 hours means a change from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m., a change of 1 hour. Some folks think it means a hundred hours; those people usually didn’t do very well in the Army.
There’s an old joke about what 7:00 a.m. means in the different armed services. In the Navy, it’s 6 bells (their system is complicated). In the Army, it’s 0700 (stated as zero 7 hundred). In the Air Forces, it means it’s around 7 in the morning, give or take 15 minutes. In the Marines, it’s “Mickey’s big hand is on the 12, and his little hand is on the 7.”
That said, the only time I didn’t wear a watch in the last 70 years or so was in the Army’s jump school. They wouldn’t let you wear a watch for the same reasons you didn’t wear one working around machining equipment. The concern was that a watch band could catch on the door while exiting the aircraft, and it would tear your arm off. The Army had a special Velcro watch strap that would tear apart if it caught on anything. I just put my watch in my pocket for the 60-second ride to the ground. Those 60 seconds were always the longest of my life. They always seemed like a lot more than 1 minute.
Thanks for commenting, Rob.