A Giant Leap for Watch-Kind

Vintage electronics and space travel are high on the list of “coolest things ever” for many readers of Hackster News, myself included. As such, it is with a good deal of excitement that I introduce you to the best thing you will see all day — the DSKY Moonwatch by Apollo Instruments. And you thought your vintage Casio calculator watch was really something special!

The DSKY Moonwatch is an absolutely beautiful homage to the guidance computer that took the first people to the Moon during NASA’s Apollo missions. It has all the utilitarian style, and — to the modern eye — oddness of a now-archaic computer that somehow handled the guidance, navigation, and control of a spaceship with power comparable to that of a TRS-80.

With a green, monochrome display, a backlit indicator panel, and a keypad with buttons foreign to today’s computer users, like “verb” and “noun,” the DSKY Moonwatch gives off some serious retrofuturistic vibes. The ceramic-coated stainless steel case and black or brown leather straps complete the look.

This watch is mostly about aesthetics, of course, but it does also offer some useful features. In addition to displaying the time, it can also act as a timer, stopwatch, alarm, or calculator. It includes a GPS receiver as well, although it is not clear exactly how the DSKY Moonwatch makes use of it. Of course you can get all of those features and more in just about any other watch, but those other watches do not look like they can take you to the Moon.

Perhaps the only flaw that this watch has is its price, coming in at approximately $800. It is not ready to ship just yet, but Apollo Instruments is taking $300 deposits for those that would like to be the first to receive a DSKY Moonwatch. The first shipments are expected sometime in the first quarter of this year, so the wait should not be very long.