Released in 1981, the Citizen TimeTrack (der Jet-Timer to the Germans, and sibling to the more famous ‘Robot Face’ model) is a striking and ingenious bit of design; so much so, that it’s rather puzzling it doesn’t seem to have inspired any copycat designs… Perhaps the tricky LCD forming a ring around the analog dial is significantly more challenging to manufacture than more typical ana-digi LCDs, which just have one more much smaller holes. Still, that doesn’t rule out homage designs employing the latter method, but it almost certainly precludes making one as impressively thin as this lovely bit of kit. The decently loud piezo is augmented by eye-catching 4Hz animation around the ‘time track’, which normally represents seconds in the time/date modes, and (sort of) shows hundredths in the stopwatch mode – for the first 0.6s; the next 0.2s they’re all shown activated, with the final 0.2s blank. Numerical hundredths can be shown at the press of a button if desired. The 12h timer has a resolution of one second. This example is in very good condition relative to many of these; the most significant blemishes being a minor scratch on the crystal, and some very slight damage to the extremely nice sliding clasp bracelet. Obtained in non-working condition, the PCB has been replaced with a NOS spare, which required near-complete disassembly of the module.

Download manual