The world’s bestselling watch happens to also tell a good story.
The Casio F-91W is a digital watch manufactured by Japanese electronics company Casio. Introduced in June 1989, it is popular for its low price (around the A$20 mark when we last checked) and long battery life … officially 7 years, but anecdotally quite often more than 10 years. [Ed: Thanks Tony.]
Annual production of the watch continues to be consistently around 3 million units.
That’s all good news … but there’s a twist:
Osama bin Laden (1957–2011) was the notorious Saudi Arabian militant and founder of the pan-Islamist organisation al-Qaeda, who masterminded numerous terrorist attacks against the United States and other Western powers, including the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City.
The fact that the son of a billionaire was wearing a A$20 Casio F-91W did not escape the attention of American investigators. As it happens, with a bit of tinkering, the watches can be used as timers for improvised explosive devices (IEDs); indeed US military intelligence officials have since specifically identified the Casio F-91W as the watch that terrorists use in constructing time bombs.
Also, US investigators discovered that 32 of the detainees stationed at Guantanamo also sported F-91Ws, while another 20 of them wore F-91W’s sibling Casio A159W.
Coincidence? Not according to US authorities. The official report literally states:
“The investigation showed that Casio watches were given to students of al-Qaeda training camps who were trained in the construction of timed explosive devices. Approximately one third of those detained with this watch had demonstrable experience with explosives or were in direct contact with persons who had the knowledge needed to manufacture such devices.”
According to secret documents issued to interrogators at Guantanamo Bay, obtained and released by The Guardian:
“The Casio F-91W digital watch was declared to be ‘the sign of al-Qaeda’ and a contributing factor to continued detention of prisoners by the analysts stationed at Guantanamo Bay. Briefing documents used to train staff in assessing the threat level of new detainees advise that possession of the F-91W and the A159W, available online for as little as Åí4, suggests the wearer has been trained in bomb making by al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.”
Let’s just hope this profiling doesn’t happen out of context. That would make for a whole lot of potential suspects.
And the watch hasn’t always had this nefarious reputation. There was a time when the young Barack Obama wore one on his pre-Presidential wrist.
Postscript
CW&T, a Brooklyn-based design practice, do some cool and conceptual work. Their Solid State Watch is a Casio F-91W movement permanently cast into a transparent resin case. It's in there forever. No buttons, no functions, no light, no adjusting for day light savings, no tweaking for the inevitable lost or gained time … and no changing that 10 year battery. Frozen in time. Check out some of their other work HERE.
Story Idea: Tony Wheeler, co-founder of Lonely Planet
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