FM Radio Watch - Vintage Sinclair

The FM Radio Watch was an LCD watch with a built-in FM radio tuner and speaker. The design aim was to produce the first/smallest FM radio watch in the world. This presented many challenges in fitting all the required components into something that could be worn on the wrist.
This was partially solved by splitting the watch into four compartments - the watch itself, the loudspeaker, the tuner and the battery compartment. The first three of these were joined together with an ingenious bellows arrangement so that the watch coud be bent around the wrist. Even so, miniaturising the mechanical and electronic parts required innovation. The watch uses surface mounted components and flexible printed circuit boards througout, including the power lines and antenna built into the strap.

The watch was launched in 1985 at the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics show (price unknown).
Unfortunately, because of financial difficulties and the acquisition by Amstrad, the watch never went into full production and and only an estimated 11,000 were produced. Therefore they are scarce today.

Watch and tuner are joined to the speaker compartment by bellows.

Tuning window visible in the radio module.

Watch rear. The flexi-circuits can be seen - left side is power, right side is antenna.

Battery compartment (without battery cover). There is a separate battery in the LCD watch.

Control knobs (left to right)
radio tuner, speaker volume. on/off and alarm volume.

Some pictures of the watch after new leather strap fitted. Makes quite a difference. Unfortunately, too fragile to use as an everyday watch.

This picture, courtesy of Rob Brough, shows the insides of the three modules during repair.