Timex Indiglo

Timex launched the Indiglo night-light during the 1992 Christmas shopping season, first in its Ironman watch line. The trick was an electroluminescent panel behind the dial: press the button and the entire face flooded with an even, distinctive greenish-blue glow — not a tiny bulb in one corner like older watches, but the whole dial lit at once. The name came from the color indigo, and the effect was almost theatrical: a utilitarian feature that felt like a light show.

Then the feature found its moment. On February 26, 1993, the World Trade Center was bombed — and as Timex's own company history tells it, an office worker wearing an Indiglo watch used its glow to guide a group of evacuees down 40 dark flights of stairs. The story made the news, sales took off, and Timex's share of the American market rose. A neat gadget had become proof that clever design could matter when it counted, and the story stuck to the product like the brand name itself.

Indiglo spread to about 70% of Timex's watch line, all glowing the same otherworldly blue at the press of a button. Competitors noticed — Casio followed with its own electroluminescent backlight in 1995 — but Indiglo got there first, and it owned the look, the color, and the feel of watching your wrist glow in the dark.

It never went away. You can still buy a Timex with Indiglo, still press the button, still get that same ghost-blue flood across the dial. For the generation that grew up checking the time in dark rooms just to see the light show, that button press was a tiny ritual — a moment of pure novelty, every single time.