Last year,at CEATEC Japan 2007, Citizen of Japan introduced an innovative concept watch. A watch that can predict an earthquake. Since Japan, like Los Angeles, is prone to earthquakes a watch like this was in order. This watch was developed in part with Rhythm watch, pairing an Earthquake early warning (EEW) receiver and an analog watch. The Seismic Watch works like any other watch that you get from the store, it tells the time, but as soon as the earth becomes restless, the watch will receive a signal from the EEW which will cause the hour hand to speed up, based on the seismic intensity estimation. The minute and the second hands will give the countdown time to the earthquakes arrival.
In addition, an alarm will sound and a built in vibrator will cause the watch to vibrate so that no warning goes unnoticed. Currently this watch will only work in Japan, as it relies on announcements from the Japan's Meteorological Office. Citizen claims that this watch can provide the wearer with a more instant notification than that of cellphone alarms or Email alerts. This prototype is only available in a men's model as the components needed for this seismic watch are quite large. Work is being done to shrink these components to fit into a women's watch.
A target release date is in 2010 with a mere $170 price tag.
