The Junghans Mega was "the world's first radio-controlled wristwatch with hands" JUNGHANS UHREN GmbH, Schramberg (analog watch) in 1991. It was produced by the German watchmaker Junghans, who had already introduced a digital watch called Mega 1 to the market in 1990.

Overview

Description

The Junghans MEGA has a stainless steel case with partial gold overlay. The white dial with two gold hands and a rectangular LCD display is protected by a circular, scratch-resistant mineral glass. The antenna for receiving the time signal from the DCF77 transmitter in Mainflingen is housed in a leather strap (brown or black) with a folding clasp. The watch is equipped with time zone setting, perpetual calendar (day of the week, date, month), digital second, internal time memory, reception control display, and transmitter call button.

Technical specifications

"The Junghans MEGA watch receives long wave time telegrams (77.5 kHz) from the official German standard ... time signal transmitter DCF77" with a wristband antenna. This allows for Europe-wide reception within a 1,500 km radius. The clock is synchronised daily with an

atomic clock An atomic clock is a clock that measures time by monitoring the resonant frequency of atoms. It is based on atoms having different energy levels. Electron states in an atom are associated with different energy levels, and in transitions betwee ...

from the

Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt The Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) is the national metrology institute of the Federal Republic of Germany, with scientific and technical service tasks. It is a higher federal authority and a public-law institution directly under fed ...

in order to display the legal time in Germany as accurately as possible. A time synchronization with the time signal transmitter is performed at 2:00 and 3:00 a.m. In case of reception issues, the synchronization is repeated every hour until 6:00 a.m. This ensures that the time accuracy of Junghans MEGA radio-controlled wristwatches is... 1 second in 1 million years. The movement is a quartz mechanism of the w605 type with a quartz time base of 32 kHz and a light barrier for hand position control. The power supply comes from a

lithium metal battery Lithium metal batteries are nonrechargeable primary batteries that have metallic lithium as an anode. The name refers to the metal as to distinguish them from rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, which use lithiated metal oxides as the cathode ma ...

in the from of a

button cell A button cell, watch battery, or coin battery is a small battery made of a single electrochemical cell and shaped as a squat cylinder typically in diameter and high – resembling a button. Stainless steel usually forms the bottom body and ...

with 3V nominal voltage.

History

In 1985, Junghans introduced the first radio-controlled table clock to the market. By 1990, Junghans engineers had miniaturized this technology to fit into the case of the digital wristwatch MEGA 1. The following year, in 1991, Junghans launched the analog version MEGA with hands. In 1994, there was "another premiere: Junghans presented the first radio-controlled watch for women." JUNGHANS UHREN GmbH, Schramberg In 2025, the Junghans watch factory still produces Mega radio-controlled watches.

References

{{Authority control Consumer electronics Receiver (radio) 1991 in technology Products introduced in 1991 Watch models Watch brands