A lot of hacks get inspired by science fiction. When that inspiration is taken from the boob tube or the silver screen, the visual design is largely taken care of by the prop department. If, on the other hand, one seeks inspiration from the written word– like [Math Campbell] did for his smart pocket watch inspired by The Diamond Age— the visuals are much more up to the individual hacker. Though no nanotechnology was involved in its creation, we think [Math] nailed the Victorian High-Tech vibe of [Neal Stephenson]’s cult classic.
The build itself is fairly simple: [Math] started with a Waveshare dev board that got him the 1.75″ round touch display, along with an ESP32-S3 and niceties such as a six-axis IMU, an RTC, microphone, speaker, and micro SD card reader. That’s quite the pocket watch! The current firmware, which is available on GitHub, focuses on the obvious use case of a very stylish watch, as well as weather and tidal display. Aside from the dev board, [Math] needed only to supply a battery and a case.
[Math] designed the case for the watch himself in Fusion360 before sending it off to be 3D printed in stainless steel. That might not be molecular-scale manufacturing like in the book, but it’s still amazing you can just do that. Ironically, [Math] is a silversmith and will be recreating the final version of the watch case in sterling silver by hand. We’d be tempted to include a door–making it a “hunter’s case” in pocket watch lingo–to protect that amoled display, but far be it for us to tell an artist how to do his work. If you’re not a silversmith, [Math] has stated his intent to add STLs to the GitHub repo, though they aren’t yet present at time of writing.
We’ve featured smart pocket watches before, some with more modern aesthetics. Of course a watch doesn’t have to be smart to grace these pages.
Thanks to [Math Campbell] for the tip! If you’ve got time on your hands after ticking done on a project, send us a tip and watch for it to appear here.
This is gorgeous. I’ve been thinking that a return of the pocket watch is due in a modern form for a while, and it seems I’m not alone.
I already have a pocket watch, I call it “phone” 🤪
pocket, he said…
But does it fit in the watch pocket of classic jeans?
I wish my phone were a pocket watch. Squeezing in a voLTE modem and antenna might be difficult, but in my country the really hard part would be convincing a carrier to connect it to their network.
You mean the Primer?
I’m confused as well. It’s been a while since I read The Diamond Age, but I don’t remember a futuristic pocket watch being a significant object tied to any character or plot.
I may be misremembering, though. I had it in my head that the novel was set in a far-flung future, but when I checked recently, it’s actually only a few decades ahead. It’s remarkable how prescient Stephenson was about the Primer, which now feels within reach, and not only for the upper class. Even if we collectively seem to prefer to use the technology to generate videos of cats playing brass instruments.
I’m not sure it’s meant to be a specific artifact from the book per-se– I never got the sense The Primer was in the form of a pocket watch– but is meant to evoke the Victorian ‘vibe’ of the New Atlantis phyle. In that I thought it did a good job; YMMV.
“The top of the document read, “RUNCIBLE VERSION 1.0- COMPILED SPECIFICATION.” The only other thing on the document was a picture of the final product, nicely rendered in Hackworth’s signature pseudo-engraved style. It looked exactly like a book.”
Thank you! It’s been a very long time. I suspect I would enjoy a re-read at this point.
Math here. The protagonist has a pocketwatch for email and other stuff. It’s mentioned in the book. It’s not the primer tho that would be cool too!
.. been a long time since I read it…
Not to belabour the point, but I needed to get closure on that.
I grepped a digital copy of the book (yes, I own a physical copy, too, not so greppable though). It describes John Hackworth’s pocket watch as a “mechanical pocketwatch”, with several charms on the same watch chain, amongst them “a golden pen that made a little chime whenever he received mail.” He then “took out a sheet of mediatronic paper and spoke the commands that transferred the mail from the pen charm onto the page”.
In the Diamond Age the protagonist John has a pocketwatch to check his email etc on.
I’m tempted to do something like this as a replica of the case of my great-grandfather’s railroad watch. I could carry the real thing, but I don’t want to risk losing it.
I carry a Waltham 1883 every day and really enjoy it. I would not use the diamond age watch to replace my Waltham but I really like the idea of modern technology in a beautiful case.
He is Neal not Neil, btw.
Whoops. Thanks, fixed that.
wow, I just started exactly the same project (seriously, I started it yesterday), except with slightly different functionality, and I was wondering how I was going to make the housing.
“before sending it off to be 3D printed in stainless steel.”
unbelievably fortuitous timing, thank you!
Now do the Primer!