The Timex Ironman Triathlon Watch - A Technical Revolutionary Sports Watch by Rod McAnally
Timex acquired the rights to use the name "Ironman" - a famous triathlon sporting event - in the name of their revolutionary new sports watch in 1986, the result was the Timex Ironman Triathlon Watch, a product that would later become a major historical icon around the world.
The essential design of the much loved sports watch has varied little over the years. The "Lazy D" shape still surrounds the prominant LCD display with rubber ring around the case and two top-buttons all secured by four bolts. The classic features of the watch including stopwatch chronograph, countdown timer, alarms, basic time and occasion alarm have varied little over the years. This is because those features work and is not to say Timex have taken their number 1 sports watch for granted, in fact just the opposite is true as the classic Ironman has received numerous technical enhancements during two decades plus as the world's leading sports watch.
The original 1986 Timex sports watch featured a chronograph timer with an unheard of 8 laps memory. The original has now evolved into a complex workout management system, that can acomodate the needs of nearly every athlete.
The first major technical innovation did not take place until 1991, after six years of solid performance on the market and it was a massive one! Timex unveiled a new lighting system based on a new electroluminescence techology system that consumed a mere fraction of the power used in other watch's lighting systems. Known as the "Indiglo Lighting System", Timex patented the design and have installed it in most of their watches.
A few years later in 1994, Timex, working with Microsoft released the world's first programmable watch with the ability to connect to a personal computer and to store PDA information such as names and phone numbers, notes and appointments. The Data Link watch also has a much greater lap memory storage ability than most Timex Ironman Watches.
Timex released an "all-day Indiglo" technology in 1996. It was essentially a reflective blue-green that provided a better contrast between the display background and digital numbers in the display, but has seemingly now been abandoned by Timex and adopted by competitors.
Timex sports watches have continued to evolve and now feature innovations such as GPS tracking systems, chest-strap heart rate monitoring systems and wireless PC transfer with integration to online community information portals.
But perhaps one of Timex's most unusual and daring innovations was added to the Timex Sleek product line and is an Optimal Viewing Angle watch known as O.V.A. The concept of this watch is to position the watch face on the side or narrow part of the wrist which is more in line with an athlete's field of view when they are participating in sport and thus minimizing wrist movement.
Since the early 1980's, considerable changes and innovations hae kept the Timex Ironman Triathlon Watch at the forefront of endurance watch technology and with Timex's commitment to offer athletes every conceivable product they could need, we are likely to see many more for years to come.
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Visit our website to learn much more about the Timex Ironman Triathlon Watch and other Sports Watches.
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