Engineering Education “Today in History” Blog: World’s First Electric Wristwatch is Released
by Alice Agogino
closeAuthor: Alice Agogino
Name: Alice Agogino
Email: agogino@berkeley.edu
Site: http://www.me.berkeley.edu/faculty/agogino/
About: Alice M. Agogino is the Roscoe and Elizabeth Hughes Professor of Mechanical Engineering and is affiliated faculty at the Haas School of Business in their Operations and Information Technology Management Group. Her research interests include: community-based design; sustainable engineering; intelligent learning systems; information retrieval and data mining; multiobjective and strategic product design; nonlinear optimization; probabilistic modeling; intelligent control and manufacturing; sensor validation, fusion and diagnostics; wireless sensor networks; multimedia and computer-aided design; design databases; design theory and methods; MEMS/NEMS synthesis and computer-aided design; artificial intelligence and decision and expert systems; and gender/ethnic equity.
She has served in a number of administrative positions at UC Berkeley, including Chair of the Faculty Senate, Associate Dean of Engineering and Faculty Assistant to the Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost in Educational Development and Technology. Prof. Agogino also served as Director for Synthesis, an NSF-sponsored coalition of eight universities with the goal of reforming undergraduate engineering education, and continues as PI for the NEEDS (www.needs.org) and SMETE.ORG digital libraries of courseware in science, mathematics, engineering and technology.
Prof. Agogino received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of New Mexico (1975), M.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering (1978) from the University of California at Berkeley and Ph.D. from the Department of Engineering-Economic Systems at Stanford University (1984). Prior to joining the faculty at UC Berkeley, she worked in industry for Dow Chemical, General Electric and SRI International. She has authored over 150 scholarly publications; has won numerous teaching, best paper and research awards; and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). At NAE she served on the Committee on Engineering Education, working on the Technologically Speaking and the Engineer 2020 projects. She is currently a member of the National Research Council's Board on Education and the Women in Academic Science Engineering Committee. She has supervised 66 MS projects/theses, 26 doctoral dissertations and numerous undergraduate researchers.See Authors Posts (864) · January 3rd, 2013 · Add a Comment
Today in History – January 3, 1957 – The world’s first electric wristwatch is released. The Hamilton watch company began research on an electric watch in 1946. Ten years later they released their watch with great success. Prior to this watch most watches kept time using a balance wheel that was kept in motion using a spring. This spring had to be wound by the wearer everyday. The Hamilton watch, while using the same balance wheel, used electromagnets to keep it in motion. One of the biggest challenges was finding a battery that was powerful enough to power the watch for a year, but also be small enough to fit inside the watch case. The Hamilton watch case styles were also an important ingredient in the watches success. People loved the their asymmetric design. However, this type of watch never gained mass popularity as they were only marginally better than their mechanical brethren. And by 1969 production stopped when quartz technology was used in favor of its accuracy.
For more information, see the Engineering Pathway’s resources on watch technology and time measurement. For related educational resources, visit the Computer Engineering Education, or the Electrical Engineering Education disciplinary communities.
Tags: Engineering Design · Engineering Management · Engineering Mechanics · General Engineering, Engineering Science · Industrial Engineering · Manufacturing Engineering · Mechanical Engineering
0 responses so far ↓
There are no comments yet...Kick things off by filling out the form below.
You must log in to post a comment.