Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Oddities of the Day - Vintage Certina Biostar Biorhythm Watch

Maybe the first and hopefully the last Biorhythm watch in history. For those of you lucky enough to not know what Biorhythms are, Wikipedia describes it; "The theory of biorhythms claims that one's life is affected by rhythmic biological cycles, and seeks to make predictions regarding these cycles and the personal ease of carrying out tasks related to the cycles."

Certina made a few varieties of this pseudo-scientific electronic watch all featuring a rainbow of three rings marked with random numbers for love, health and some other nonsense. Oh those silly dirty hippies...

1970s Certina Biostar Varieties


Biostar Caseback

And now for something completely different...

Below is a cheapo vintage watch by Continental from the late sixties/early seventies. A fellow collector Ruud has pointed out an oddity that we can not figure out. Perhaps you might have a guess? The watch has three seconds hands. Two in the center that appear forked and then the sub-seconds at six. This is not a chronograph, there is no stopwatch function, just the time and three indications for seconds...

Update:
Here is one opinion...from Fook in Singapore;

"Is the white hand luminous? Maybe its for the use when its dark. Looking at it now, when surrounding is bright, the red hand is very prominent whereas the white one is less so."

And just in from inventor Greg Blonder with what I believe to be the correct answer;

I'm pretty sure the two hands are used to start a race. As they get close to "12" you say "on your mark". When the first hand hits 12 you say "set", and when the second hand, three seconds later hits 12, say "go". A cheap version of a sailing or track and field watch.


See Also;
All Offbeat Watch Posts-->LINK
All Vintage Watch Posts-->LINK



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