35 years later David still enjoys his watch saying "f*ck it". Some things never get old.

Dude made a watch swear, absolute legend

Pro tip: if you live an apartment, you can use anything loud enough as a talking clock, at least in the middle of the night. If you make enough noise, you'll inevitably hear a voice telling you the time before long.

When he made the watch say “F$&k it”, I giggled like I was twelve again, and then looked around to make sure my mom didn’t hear it... from three states away.😆

Talking watches still exist, for the blind. Technology evolved in a way that they now have enough memory to have enough phrases pre-recorded, instead of voice-synthesizing.

This must be LGR's favourite episode with all the wood grain.

I love the design of that pyramid clock. I can imagine it on the desk of a business man in one of those late 80's business buildings that have a metallic look, like the one in Gremlins 2 or the one in Who's Harry Crumb.

In the early 90s when watches were cheap, we'd all sync them to the second with the electronic school bell system, then turn on the hour chime, so we'd all sound off at once, and we thought that was cute. But then, one of us got the idea of getting every kid to offset by exactly one second and turn on the hour chime, resulting in a different watch beeping for about 20 seconds. Oh boy did that upset the teachers. The principal prohibited the hour chime school-wide really quick. (The ADHD kids like me were still allowed to use the alarm to remember to go to the nurse to get their meds, heh.)

Being totally blind, I have owned several of these products over the years. Thanks for the trip down memory lane. It was fun. :-)

The pyramid clock looks like it would fit in perfectly on the desk of some evil mastermind or super villain at the top of the tallest and most menacing skyscraper in the city

@14:40 *Watch gets wet from the pool* *FUCK IT FUCK IT FUCK IT*!

RadioShack was amazing. They literally made some of the best stuff for the price, and it’s all built to last. Some of it is near indestructible

It was fun hearing the discoveries of 11 year old 8-bit guy

In the 80s my friends and I would set our watches one second apart and sit next to each other. When the hourly beep would happen it sounded like the beep was moving along the row. 😁

I used to work at Radio Shack back in the 80s and they had a lot of cool shit. This was when they had those cell phones with the giant battery case that you had to carry like a suitcase. Ah...Good times.

I watch these when I go to sleep simply for the fact it’s so interesting that my brain can keep listening and because his style of recording is so comfy

That Spartus clock was an absolute work of art, a fantastic blend of rather tacky aesthetic design and built like a tank functional design.

The fact that a 40-year-old clock still works after being left in packaging for all that time speaks to the engineering that went into it. Amazing!

I had a talking watch in the 80s that was branded "Omni," but clearly had the same guts as the Radio Shack one. The alarm started with same chime, and its voice was the same, but instead of the Bach Minuet it played the *Boccherini* Minuet, which was liltingly charming. It was a lot more fragile that that RS one appeared, so it lived in its included desktop stand instead of on my wrist.

You can just hear the pain in David's voice when he talks about the yellowed plastic cover on that first digital clock. Retrobrite video coming?

I look forward to the retro brighting followup to get that packaging back to normal! :)

was REALLY racking my brain for a second about why the Mattel clock needed spark plugs...

My dad was blind, so we had quite a few of these in our house. Very cool. I remember that Vox Watch so well. We were a Radio Shack family!

it's always fun to hear early voice synthesis

I love how the little Vox Watch says "attention please" with it's alarm. So cute! I like talking clocks, they're practical. I was sick recently and moving my head constantly to see my clock was making me dizzy, but my phone has the google assistant so I could just ask and get the time. Unfortunately the Google assistant is a poorly designed mess of an interface so it's less useful then some of these clocks were haha, even if you had to press the button for the clocks.

I had the Seiko pyramid one! It was a gift from my step-grandmother (who specialized in awful gifts). It took so long that I had to resist just picking it up to see the time.

My great Aunt collected clocks, she had one of those pyramid clocks and use to chuckle at the Japanese accent. I don't remember it sounding as bad as it does in the video, but it has been many years since I've heard it. It may still be in the family somewhere. I also remember that weather radio from Radio Shack, I think that must have been very popular.

It’s been a long while since I’ve watched your videos, so I’m on a catching up binge watch while I’m coming down from a horribly crippling migraine. Your videos are so soothing. They’re gentle enough that they don’t hurt my ears and eyes when I have a migraine, and your voice is always level tone & gentle. I’m not the best at understanding most of what you talk about but I thoroughly enjoy it regardless. Thank you for making your content the way you do.

You making that poor watch say dirty words caught me off balance. I was in tears 🤣👍

9:59 Man, that was wild- literally just as I was typing out a comment describing the little talking clock my grandma had, that I loved playing with as a kid, you whipped out the exact one she had. I used to carry it around her house and just press the button over and over again until my parents wanted to take it from me, but my grandma wouldn’t let them. I haven’t seen it in years, although I’m pretty sure my parents probably still have it somewhere. But, damn, that brought back memories.

What a blast from the past! My mom had the "Micronta" alarm clock from the Radio Shack ad for many, many years. The voice was identical to the TI-driven alarm clock you demoed first. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.

5:03 that "oh yeah" caught me COMPLETELY off-guard! 😂

Batteries not included In the present it’s an inconvenience but in the future it’s a blessing

I own and use as my morning alarm a Panasonic RC-6900 from 1975. It was the first clock that could actually tell you what time it is from a pre-recorded voice. (I guess somebody got into a recording booth and recorded every single minute and hour onto tape?) It wakes me up every morning by saying “Seven O’Clock!” And it will keep repeating the time every ten seconds until I turn it off. It uses a magnetic disc for the voice kind of like a cassette. I call it Rhoda because the voice sounds like Rhoda Morgenstern from the Mary Tyler Moore Show and Rhoda.

Being blind since birth and born in 1978, I have lots of experience with different talking clocks. The Spartus is one I first saw in 1986. It has basically the same speech chip and functions as the Radio Shack VoxClock III which I got for Christmas in 1985. The Radio Shack VoxWatch is something I first saw in December of 1985, and its chip is based on that of the Sharp Talking Time I from the early 80's. The Talking Time I has a different alarm tune (Boccherini Minuet in A) and a few different features. Not that it'd be worth much, but with the distinctive chips the Spartus has, I wonder if it could be emulated in MAME or similar?

I'm only in my 30s, but man this brings back memories. I still have Dad's Micronta digital alarm clock that looks awfully similar to the Spartan clock without the console extending below it. Had it since I started school in 1992. Dad had that Realistic Weather Radio since as far back as I can remember, and I remember spending a lot of time trying to figure out how it worked as a kid.

14:45 11 year olds? I'm 43 and just LOL'd

I'm reminded of my mother's Radio Shack Alarm Clock. The alarm sound was a rooster crowing. It was solid black with a LCD display, a few aqua colored switches and a large aqua button for having it speak the time. When setting the time I had to listen to constant loud ding noises followed by the voice telling me the time. I still have it somewhere in my house.

HAD ONE OF THESE for my Blind Grandfather that used to live with us. It used to the speak the time every hour or when he pressed the top down.

I truly miss radio shack. It was always fun to go in and see some of the stuff they had, that as you said, you literally couldnt get anywhere else. My dad gave me his 'portable' (cuz it had a handle to carry it. Not cuz it was easy to lug around. it prolly weighed 40 pounds) reel to reel player. I used it to record all kinda of stuff. But the only place you could get blank reels, even in the early 80s, was Radio Shack. I must have bought 50 of them over the 4-5 years I had that thing.

10:50 My dad had one of those weather radio cubes. I wish I still had it, was a good little radio. 👍 I see going back in the RS catalogs that it came out in 1970 and with him passing away a few years later, he had to get it pretty much when it came out, in either 1970 or 71. I was just a toddler back then and would listen to it for hours my mother said. It worked up right until I broke it by dropping it and landed on a corner and broke into many pieces that time. 😢

Whenever I'm looking for my nostagic trip down PC memory lane (haha so punny) it brings me right here everytime. Something about the synth intro, the throwback information and general 8-Bit Guy style I really enjoy watching as well as some unexpected laughs. Thank you 8-Bit, always looking forward to the next bit of PC history you bring us!

I've been poking around old newspapers and catalogs trying to find out more about Spartus and that clock, since the release date was in question. The earliest reference I can find of a talking clock from Spartus is in late 1982, a newspaper advertisement for their earlier AVT model 1410. (AVT stood for "Audio Visual Time" for which they also filed a trademark for in 1982.) The clock featured in your video is a slightly newer model number, a model 1411. The 1411 was apparently also sold at Radio Shack where it was known as the "Micronta VoxClock 3," that version of it debuting in Radio Shack's 1985 catalogue on page 148 under number 63-906 and labelled "New for '85." The prior VoxClock 2 that your video also features had previously hit shelves in late 1983 (that one apparently a rebranded Reizen according to another commenter). So with the immediately prior models in both product lines (Spartus' 1410 & Micronta's VoxClock 2) releasing in late 1982 and late 1983 respectively, and Radio Shack's rebranded version debuting sometime in 1985, it's likely that the dates on the chips do correspond roughly with its release. Perhaps as early as 1984 but probably not much earlier. Safe to assume that the Spartus 1411 is a ~1985 release despite its late 70s style. Regarding Spartus itself: The earliest reference I ran across of this company making clocks was in a newspaper in 1958, though I saw references to their camera equipment in 1941. I didn't dig farther back than that. In 1964 it was reported that manufacturing was being moved from Chicago to Louisville, the headquarters later listed on your clock. In 1996 Spartus was acquired by General Time (Westclox), and then in 2001 the bankrupt General Time was bought out by Salton Inc, although they later sold off their entire time products business in 2007 to NYL Holdings LLC. NYL Holdings still sells alarm clocks under the Westclox name today, but the Spartus branding goes unused.

Love the techmoan reference when removing the screen cover!

Love looking at these older clocks to see how the technology evolved. I still use an Alarm Clock (non-talking) that was manufactured in the late 80’s, and it works great! They definitely made things better in those days. Also, the tune playing on the Watch Alarm is a version of Bach’s Minuet in G. Cool! Enjoyed the video!

I'm perplexed and amazed by that "F*ck it", I never thought I would laugh so much with this simple 80's joke, thank you, David 😂❤

Your videos are always so cool and informative. I love them!

My grandma had things like this all over the house. She was blind , and in the eighties we shopped at radio shack for all this stuff, the clock The Watch, it was really cool when she got to watch

It’s strange how many things were thought to be the future but never caught on

Love every time you put out an episode. Thank you man.

The watch brought back so many memories. So much so I remembered the tune as you played it on the alarm and it reminded me of how many times it used to go off in class at school as I used to let it play at my teachers annoyance lol

Speaking of NOAA weather stations, my car is a 2000 Saab, it has 3 radio settings; AM, FM, and WB. The weather band actually works, and since I live in Florida it can be handy. My car is my only weatherband radio though lol...

14:18 Ironically, I just watched a video where they also mentioned that slang "sick" was relatively new, but apparently they found footage of skateboarders using the term, I believe in the 80s. Either way, it wasn't a widespread term until later. If anyone is interested I'll post a link the video.

I really love 8 Bit Guy videos. What makes them special? It's that highly personal narrative. He weaves informative factual data with personal anecdotes. Perfect! Keep up the brilliant work! Marius (from Warsaw, Poland)

Sir, I love voice synthesizers. In the 80's, we saw Speack Spell in the movies and we were crazy to get one (in Brazil it didn't exist). The male voice is usually better than the female voice (frequency makes it bad). I was impressed with the VoxClock2, clear and beautiful voice. THANK YOU for the amazing video!!! It was funny you pressing the wristwatch repeatedly :DDDD Sorry about my poor english xD

Finally we have an epic swearing moment on one of your videos, David!

My grandma gave me a pyramid shaped one (different than the one in this video) that had a really creepy bitcrushed rooster sound for the alarm. I hated that alarm so much, especially when the batteries were getting old and the pitch would change

You channel gives me nostalgia for the time before I was born. I love it

So nice, I love your content man!

This video reminded me of a wristwatch my late great grandma gave to me that audibly told you the time when you pressed a button on it. I was so fascinated/amused by it that she got me one of my own. I don't remember the brand, but it was big, silver and it made a ding or gong sound before telling the time in a robotic voice. It's been 11 years since her passing, thank you for bringing back that memory.

Your channel is so great. It's like nostalgia overload for me. In my teens, I can remember pouring through the Radio Shack catalog for hours and just dreaming! Then in my later teens when my "cooler" friends were figuring out how to score booze, my friends and I were in the electronics section at Radio Shack figuring out what to build next.

I would absolutely love to see a NOAA Weather Radio video from the 8-Bit Guy. I find it to be a really interesting topic.

Very jealous of that Spartus wood grain Alarm clock. I love the old Texas Instrument TMS5100 speech synthesizers chips that don't seem to be in production anymore. Those by far had the perfect balance of articulation and timbre. Hopefully one day I'll be able to snag a functional piece that can sit on my desk with one of those chips in it. Sort of like an Alarm clock! Great video as usual

13:45 Must have been a fairly popular tune in the 80s ...does anyone remember the musical duel in "Electric Dreams" (1984)? The piece is "Minuet in G Major" by Christian Petzold (frequently erroneously attributed to J.S. Bach) Also 5PM had me rolling!!

As primitive as the first one looks now I’m still impressed it was made nearly 60 years ago. Just consider what technology existed 60 years before that…

I love the nostagia you give me for Radio Shack. My dad worked there from 84 to 91 I believe, and I got to see a fair bit of their computer tech growing up.

I love voice synthesis and all things retro. My dad would watch you (and still does) when I was a wee lass. Interesting how I tend to watch now what he watched then :) love your content

I had the talking watch and pyramid one. In the mid 80's, my parents had the best one though, a talking alarm clock that would cuss at you when using snooze.

I have a regular Spartus alarm clock from the 80s and I still use it. Same basic design with the wood look and just a smaller control panel in the front.

I am so glad you made this video, I’ve been especially curious about that Voxwatch ever since I found a little demo of it a few months ago. The Spartu Clock was I’m pretty sure rebranded by RadioShack as the Vox clock three. There was a vox clock to which I do have, it’s the same cube shape except it doesn’t have a screen and it has the same voice as the watch but a different alarm melody. Sharp also made a few talking clocks with the same voice and they also made a talking calculator clock. I love old talking electronics from the 80s, probably one of my favorite videos on your channel is that video of the worlds first digital answering system.

Thanks for this, David! A real trip down memory lane for this geek that grew up in the 70's / 80's. That weather radio you showed - those were really cool back in the day. You should do a research video on weather radios from back then. Some of them got pretty sophisticated near the end. The tones broadcast on the NOAA radio frequencies would make them do things like automatically start broadcasting watch announcements or sound alarms when warnings were issued. Pretty cool old-school technology.

5:02 Impressive, American electronics had fitted plugs back then, in the UK we still had to fit plugs on most items way into the 80’s

I love my realistic brand gear, they take me back to some happy times when i got to go to Tandy shop in Australia and see some grand things on the shelves. When i can i try and find the stuff i saw on the shelf and add it to my collection, hopefully still working.

I love your wonderful expeditions into the past :)

I remember having the pyramid clock when I was a kid. Loved that thing. Eventually I broke it by hitting the too too many times.

Always have the "Time" to see a The 8-Bit Guy Video

i definitely want that Seiko pyramid clock in my house. it looks gorgeous

It’s interesting that you mentioned that RadioShack made both a weather radio and talking clock, because they did eventually make a weather radio that also has a talking clock in it

I received the Vox clock for a gift. I loved it for years. I moved in with someone who hated it. Comprises we make. Good memories. Thanks this was fun to watch.

Love your videos man. Thank you. You have increased my interesting in this generation of tech a ton! Also allows me to under tech to a much deeper level.

As always, super interesting Time Capsule Episode! Thanks man!

your into is so nice. please never change it!

I'm getting "Electric Dreams" vibes from that Vox Watch. The song it plays was featured as a duet between the cellist, Madeline (Virginia Madsen), and Edgar the computer. I think the watch itself was also in the opening scene of the movie as well. By the way, the voice samples on the Radio Shack Vox Clock sounds like a young Joanne Daniels.

Radio Shack was the bomb back in the day, I have many childhood memories of hearing the time announced at a few friends houses. you should totally do one on NOAA radio's that would be fun.

You can imagine that any modern talking watch would be rigorously tested and any such 'fun' words immediately locked out and expunged in case someone had a laugh. Naughty, naughty! 😄

That Seiko clock was bought at Seidenburg Luggage. My parents and grandparents used to shop there all the time. 2 Locations just outside of Philly. They were the best!

I have to Agree the End is PURE GOLD! 😆😆😆 making his Watch Swear is PURE GOLD!

The speaking watch brings me way back in the 90's when I got a calculator watch for my birthday. It was like Future Tech to me and my friends... I ended up getting in trouble once for using it during a math quiz in school and was told I couldn't wear it to school anymore. Ahh the good old days.

I actually think the VoxClock looks cooler than the Seiko Pyramid clock. It looks high tech while the pyramid looks chintzy. I could imagine seeing the VoxClock on Dick Tracy or Get Smart haha. Also, I remember saying "sick!" for something that was cool back in the early 90s!

great episode I love your channel David

I always find 8bit guys videos so entertaining, all the vintage tech.

Oh man, that Spartus voice takes me back to the original Speak & Spell!! ♥️

This was good! I enjoyed learning about this, I don't know much about talking clocks at all so this was quite educational for me. Not much else to say other than good job!

Excellent episode idea....loved it

Me and my dad both watched your videos, I was excited to find out he liked them too because I didn’t know until I heard the theme song of your videos from his tablet. He always used to show me electrical circuits and how they worked when I was little, he was an electrician. He passed away earlier this year but watching your videos reminds me of when he explained this stuff to me and reminds me of our shared interest of electronics. I’ve never been good with electronics but I still find them interesting. I hope to get good with them someday to honor my dad.

its crazy how simple that first clock is, still still a work of engenearing though

Being about 9 years older than you my first real watch thrill was the Casio calculator watch around 1980. Later on the scientific calculator watch blew my mind away but freaked out the school staff when it came to my math exams! Had to remove it before I went in! 🙁 Still aced the exams though! 😅

Love the glimpse into your younger years on the family video!

Thank you for another wonderful video

Any time I see Seiko in a title of a channel I love I get excited. Youre lucky to have that in your possession