Atomic watch, and industry chatter

... written for Panbo by Ben Ellison and posted on Jan 18, 2007

Casio WaveceptorAtomicI’m feeling so old today. First I saw this Casio Waveceptor watch going for $25 on Woot. Five times a day the thing listens to WWVB, the time signal station in Colorado, and adjusts itself to atomic precision. I remember in the 70’s laboriously tuning into that station and tracking errors in the various expensive chronometers on a whale research vessel where we were using celestial nav to map and stay safe on the big banks off the Dominican Republic.
  Then I hear that Darrell Lowrance has retired and a fellow young enough to be my kid has taken over as new CEO of Navico (Simrad, Lowrance, etc.). And early this week old time big yacht installer Larry Smith Electronics suddenly shut its doors. I suspect some sort of financial mismanagement was the cause, not lack of business. Meanwhile, this old guy’s phone is busy as companies prepare to strut their stuff in Miami.

Comments

I think a digital display would be more in keeping with atomic precision!

Terry

Posted by: yachtvalhalla at January 18, 2007 5:40 PM | Reply

There must be some juicy rumors regarding the Lowrance "retirement". What's the real story?...

Posted by: javacat97 at January 19, 2007 9:39 AM | Reply

50 years in the business, and cashed out pretty nicely last year, what's the surprise? Folks have been predicting Darrell's imminent retirement ever since the buy out. At Ft. Lauderdale a distributor did tell me that Darrell planned to stay until a certain pet project (I don't know what) was finished, but, come to think of it, that was the same guy who misinformed me about Lowrance's NMEA 2000 plugs.

Posted by: Ben at January 19, 2007 9:53 AM | Reply

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