Comic strips Technology

The smart watch has been a holy grail long before Dick Tracy

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Alan Gardner September 12, 2013 1 minute 0 comments

Lots of talk about smart watches with new products from Samsung, Sony, Qualcomm coming this fall. And of course, every news story has to mention the comic Dick Tracy and his iconic walkie-talkie watch. But as NPR reports, the smart watch existed before Dick Tracy’s 1946 debut.

From NPR quoting Marc Weber, a curator at the Computer History Museum:

The cartoonist and creator of Dick Tracy, Chester Gould, actually got his inspiration from real-life inventor Alfred J Gross. Gross died more than a decade ago without ever seeing the smart watch get popular.

…

“Today, the phone in your pocket is more like a pocket watch,” he says, “or in your purse, and the wrist computer is the equivalent of the wristwatch.”