© Mark Ollig
Sony began selling a stylish, compact portable TV in 1982 that revolutionized how we watched television.
The Sony Watchman FD-210 was the first true handheld pocket TV to succeed commercially. It quickly appealed to travelers, sports fans, and anyone who wanted to watch their favorite shows on the go.
The Watchman name combined the word “watch” from watching television and “man” from the portability of the popular Sony Walkman TPS-L2 model cassette player introduced in 1979.
I was confused when I first heard about the Sony Watchman. Why would they name a portable TV after a security guard or night watchman?
Watchman also implied time-keeping, but ironically, the Sony Watchman FD-210 had no built-in clock or timer.
On Dec. 6, 1982, an article in the Minneapolis Star and Tribune said, “How many Watchman, one might reasonably wonder, will be squished into pancakes by people who fall asleep with them in their beds?”
However, I digress.
The Sony Watchman FD-210, a TV small enough to fit inside your pocket, sold for $372 in 1982 ($1,162 in 2023).
One of the factors behind the success of the Sony Watchman was its slim and lightweight design, which was achieved through its unique flat-display tube instead of the traditional cathode ray tube.
The 1982 Watchman FD-210 design was compact, measuring 3.5 by 7.75 by 1.25 inches and weighing 1.4 pounds. It included a built-in speaker and an earphone jack for private listening.
The Watchman’s two-inch newly-developed monochrome 0.65-inch thick flat display tube, phosphor angular screen, high-contrast ratio, and backlighting provided excellent viewing of TV video in low-light conditions.
The Watchman FD-210’s tube used an electron gun to emit a beam of electrons that scanned the screen line by line, creating a rectangular raster pattern that captured and reconstructed images progressively, one line at a time.
The beam moved horizontally from left to right, blanked, and then quickly moved back to the left before sweeping out the next line.
Each scan line slightly sloped downhill towards the lower right, while the retrace was faster and horizontal.
The varying intensity of the electron beam created shades of gray images on the flat-display phosphor-coated screen by causing the phosphor pixel dots (tiny, light-emitting particles) to glow with different brightness levels.
The Watchman FD-210 operated on four 1.5-volt AA regular or rechargeable batteries for up to three hours or, with its six VDC transformer, it could be plugged into a standard AC outlet.
A superheterodyne receiver with a 6.3-inch telescopic antenna was used to receive VHF (2-13) and UHF (14-83) channels, which could be selected via the tuning wheel on the front of the Watchman.
The original Sony Watchman, the FD-210, was a huge success and was acknowledged for its role in developing other small mobile electronic devices.
Each Watchman model introduced after 1982 was smaller and featured improved technology.
Introduced in 1998, the Sony Watchman FDL-22 was one of the last handheld TVs made by Sony.
It featured a 2.2-inch color LCD screen with an ergonomic case tapered down from the top and included Sony’s new Straptenna technology, where the wrist strap also served as the antenna.
However, by February 2009, the Sony Watchman and other analog models became obsolete when the switch to over-the-air digital broadcasting made them unable to receive TV broadcasts without a digital converter box.
The start of digital television and the evolution of smartphones made portable pocket televisions obsolete.
Once the watchman of the airwaves, the Sony Watchman FD-210 is a valued piece of historical technology sought by collectors.
I recently took my Sony Watchman FD-210 (manufactured in September 1982) out from storage and placed it on the table.
The FD-210 was still in excellent condition, as was its leather carrying case, user manual, earphones, and AC transformer.
While writing today’s column, I occasionally glanced at the Watchman and decided to see if it still worked.
After plugging it into an AC outlet and switching on the power, the green LED light came on.
The 41-year-old Sony Watchman FD-210 display screen quickly lit up, and I heard static audio from the speaker.
Although the FD-210 could not receive any over-the-air digital TV channels due to its analog receiver, it was still a nostalgic experience seeing the fuzzy, flickering black-and-white random static images on the screen.
It reminded me of my youth when the television station broadcasts we watched were on Channels 2, 4, 5, 9, and 11.
On rare occasions, when the weather was just right, and the rooftop antenna was correctly positioned, our family’s Zenith console television could receive Channel 3 from Duluth and Channel 12 out of Mankato.
While on the go today, I watch TV using the YouTube TV app on my smartphone.
