1983 seems so long ago, many of you readers may not have been alive back then - I was hardly aware of my surroundings myself, I was busy watching Scooby Doo and reruns of Space Ghost and Robotech to pay attention to historical events like Martin Luther King Jr. Day becoming a federal holiday, Metallica's debut album, and the theatrical opening of Return of the Jedi.

However, the foundations of many of our modern technologies were taking shape even back then. Today we take portable video for granted, since we can watch streaming video and news reports anywhere we go on our laptops, cell phones, and PDAs, but back then the closest thing anyone had to TV on the go were CRTs with handles. Then, in a revolutionary move, Seiko came along with the TV Watch, making every Dick Tracy fan's dreams come true. While you couldn't communicate with someone else on the watch, you could at least watch broadcast television wherever you happened to be.

The watch came in two models, one with earbuds and the other with headphones, and before you wonder how they got a TV receiver in such a small box, note that the TV watch was really just a tiny monochrome LCD display attached to a battery pack and TV/FM receiver that you wore on your belt or kept close to your side while you watched the screen. The receiver was about the size of a 1980s walkman, so even though it's somewhat large by today's standards, it was impressively small back then. The Seiko TV Watch was on sale in 1983 for 98,000 Yen with earbuds and 108,000 Yen with headphones. (approximately $830 USD/$915 USD in today's dollars) [via Neatorama]