Miracle Travel Clock

Another travel clock from my watch and clock collection.

A travel clock is usually a compact (sometimes, pocket-) clock with an alarm which can be mechanical, electronic (or digital) or even an electro-mechanical clock (and I have at least one of those, of which - later).

I have several travel clocks, and already cataloged on this blog one of them and my favorite - the Ford Travel Clock.

But today I bring you another travel clock of mine, a cheap Chinese travel clock called Miracle Travel Clock.

I think this clock is at least 20 years old, as such and similar clocks were widely and very cheaply available and even ubiquitous in the early 1990s here in Russia.

So I opened the battery compartment, inserted a new battery... and the clock sprang to life! After 20 years!

Can't read what it says on the clip but suspect it means something along the lines of "brilliant' or "brilliance" or some other such stuff.

It has a clip for wearing on your belt and a chain also with a clip for same - double security, you wouldn't want to lose such a cool thing, would you now?

A view on the battery compartment, opened, and a Toshiba battery inserted.

Various setup modes.

A manual allegedly for this clock, which I pulled from the Internet, but it doesn't quite work with my specimen.

However, I figured out how to set up current time and other stuff (and quickly forgot again).

After making this write-up for my Russian blog, I noticed that the whole design of the clock looked strangely familiar... and after some deliberation I was able to make the connection... this clock is designed to look like it is a pager -- a much more expensive device for sending short text messages via telephone operators or something, popular in the early 1990s, the precursor of the modern cell phone.

So you were supposed to wear it on your belt and people would be deceived into thinking it was a pager while in reality it was a cheap alarm clock - a pager for the poor (without the paging ability).

Compare to some pagers (Internet picture):

It looks especially like the two Motorola models here - the Motorola Minicall Express and the Motorola Bravo Express (or maybe it's one and the same), in the center and in the right hand lower corner.

 in memory of b v i