Amida Digitrend OSII Black Watch
Adding lume to the Amida Digitrend is challenging because the hour and minute discs inside it never stop turning, so any number waiting in the dark would have no chance to charge before it slides into view. The original Digitrend, released in 1976, read time through a prism that bent light off two horizontal discs into a vertical display, mimicking that year's new wave of digital LED watches like the Girard-Perregaux Casquette and Bulova Computron, without a single chip or battery: just springs and gears. The OSII Black keeps that system, called LRD, and finally adds light to it: a single-block sapphire hood floods the whole module with light instead of one narrow window, charging BGW9 Super-LumiNova on the numerals, the logo, and a new internal framework styled like the roll cage and air-intake tubes of a two-seat sports car. It all runs on a Soprod Newton P024 automatic fitted with an in-house jump-hour module built from nine components, inside a 39.6mm by 39mm case. Amida is making 150, available either on a black Alcantara strap with orange calfskin lining or an optional steel bracelet. Fifty years later, it's still a mechanical watch dressed as a digital one. Only now it can be read in the dark.
