The first digital wristwatch

In 1971, Bulgarian inventor Peter Petroff (1919–2003) introduced the first electronic wristwatch, called Pulsar. Before that, however, he had lived through a turbulent history of warfare and imprisonment.
Born in 1919 in the village of Brestovitsa, Peter Petroff joined the French Foreign Legion in 1939. Captured while defending the Maginot Line in 1940, he spent a year in a prisoner-of-war camp in Poland before returning to Bulgaria. In 1941, he became an officer in the Bulgarian army and served in Tsar Boris III’s guard. In 1944, he moved to Munich, where he began studying engineering at the University of Munich.
Petroff founded Care Electrics and developed the world’s first wireless heart monitor. A year later, in 1971, he invented and introduced the first digital wristwatch, Pulsar.
At the time, Pulsar watches sold for as much as US$2,100 each, becoming a symbol of innovation in electronics and timekeeping.