Casio have been around for quite a while now. From its inception in April 1946 by Tadao Kashio the company has continuously produced innovative products. I had a quick read through the history section on the Casio website (over a coffee) and came across a picture of 14-A, the first all-electric compact calculator conceived in 1957. Have a look at the size of the thing! Who in their right mind called that compact, its a bloody desk! Launching their first watch in 1974, Casio entered the wristwatch market at a time when the watch industry had just discovered digital technology. This alone screams to me that from the beginning Casio are no late or early adopters, they are innovators.
It just goes to show how quickly we have advanced over the last half century. We now have atomic digital watches with built in calculators, barometers and solar technology that sit nice and snug on our wrist. I was cleaning my room last Monday and I just happened to find my old Casio Illuminator. It was put into one of my junk drawers. I think everyone has a junk drawer where all the stuff you don't want to throw in the trash ends up. Ironically, in my opinion, they are like a look back in time themselves providing a reminisce of past bed room cleans. To my surprise, the battery still had live and it hadn't lost to much time.
So whats the Casio product range? I think Casio have hit the nail on the head with their range of digital watches. They have a watch for every category of person. Whether you are the sporty type that spends your weekend climbing mountains in Himalayas or just a casual general Joe that sips beer watching reruns of Family Guy (like me). Furthermore, every category of watch comes packed with functionality that you may or may not use. The development of the Casio G Shock watch depicts a very interesting story, which I will briefly discuss.
Casio G-Shock watches are the pinnacle of tough watches. We don't realize how much time and effort Casio have put into developing this type of watch. Not to mention the time spent on product testing. Well not that people need to care anyway. They are truly a work of genius. The designers at Casio wanted to engineer a digital watch that would never break. Guided by a "Triple 10" development concept, the design teams sought a watch with 10-meter free-fall endurance, 10-bar water resistance and a 10-year battery life. Empirically watches are thought to be breakable items for some reason. Maybe due to early watch development that focused mainly on function, that is keeping the time, and watch endurance was not really a priority within the design specification. This meant that earlier watches were fragile pieces of jewellery that when dropped or put beneath water would simply break.
During the development life cycle of the Casio G Shock technology, there were 200 experimental prototypes built for endurance testing. I think that is astounding! That is rather large number of prototypes. To me this seems that the guys at Casio did not have a set in stone picture of what the final G Shock product watch would look and function like. Although, innovation is a challenging business which typically involves a great deal of trial and error. Furthermore, the structural re-engineering of parts took approximately two years. The fruits of this epic achievement brought a revolution in time piece design.
By always employing the latest technology, and continuing to re-design the conventional function of the watch, the G Shock brand has become Casio's flagship watch product.
The author has wrote a number of blog posts and articles relating to Atomic Digital Watches and has keen interest in Casio products. Visit the authors blog for more information.
