From the annals of impractical and magnificent watch design is Amida’s 1970 Digitrend Prism Jump Hour, a mechanical watch that looks like a side-view LED timepiece. Watchismo describes the mechanism: “Make two dials for hour and minutes, print the numbers backwards and have a prism reflect the corrected mirror image through the side crystal.”
Update: Charlie sends in this: “An ad for the World’s First Digital Watch, which is rather non-digital.”