Seiko Watches: Still A Classic

Seiko Watches: Still A Classic

It was 1881 when Kintaro Hattori opened the first modern clock shop in Tokyo, Japan. He was a meticulous craftsman, building the clocks he branded Seikosha with precision and care. He crafted his clocks one at a time and they became so popular that he hired ten apprentices and opened a small clock factory --the direct ancestor of today's Seiko Corporation. It took some two months to produce one dozen clocks and in 1885 they began to manufacture pocket watches.

Over the next four decades, the Seikosha company came up with one innovative idea after another, making alarm clocks, table clocks and the first musical clocks in Japan. By 1912, Hattori was toying with the notion of making the first Japanese wristwatch and in 1924, he renamed his company Seiko. Forty-three years of precision clock-making had inspired Hattori to invent and build the first classic Seiko wristwatch.

Seiko has continued to be a creative watch company, inventing the first self-winding watch in 1956 and the first quartz chronometer in 1964. That was also the year that Seiko became the official timekeeper of the Olympic Summer Games held in Tokyo. Since that time, Seiko has been the official timekeeper for several Olympic Games and other competitions where precise time-keeping is a must. Seiko is a classic, well-respected company that keeps coming up with new, exciting ideas in timekeeping. In 1969, Seiko introduced the first quartz wristwatch. Sure, quartz is fine, but why stop there? 1969 was the year that Tiffany & Company began selling the 18-karat, solid gold Seiko Astron 35SQ in New York City.

Seiko remains a fine, classic watchmaker and continues to release firsts to the world of watches. They introduced the first multi-function digital wristwatch, with stopwatch, calendar and timer features, as well as the first LCD quartz watch with a six-digit display of hours, minutes and seconds. LCD, by the way, stands for Liquid Crystal Display and is a dial that displays information with liquid crystal cells in an applied electric field.

Seiko is a classic, any way you look at it. The watches they sell in the USA come with a remarkable, three-year guarantee so you know you're getting a classic, quality timepiece. It will surely be fascinating to see what they come up with next.
 posted by Watches Giant