SEIKO watches: from 1881 to today!

SEIKO is one of the largest Japanese watch companies in the world. It is very famous because of its high quality watch manufacturing and advanced technology. Today, all of the company's watches, even minor items, are made entirely in SEIKO's factories, something not all watch manufacturers do. The SEIKO brand was started by Japanese Kintaro Hattori.

Kintaro Hattori from the age of 13 worked as an apprentice in various watch workshops such as "Kobayashi clock shop", "Kameda clock shop" and "Sakata clock shop". There he learned to repair and sell watches. In 1881, watchmakers in Japan began to study and produce pocket watches based on Western products. To do this, the Japanese bought all imported watches from foreign trading companies. In the same years, Kintaro Hattori started to operate a jewelry and watch shop in Tokyo, Japan under the name " 部 時 計 店" ("K.Hattori"). A few years later, Hattori worked closely with foreign trade companies such as C&J Favre-Brandt, Zanuti & Cie, etc. As a result, he was able to sell in his store imported watches that other Japanese watch stores did not have at that time.

Slowly, the shop gained a great reputation because of the rare imported watches that customers found in it. This continued growing success enabled Hattori to move his shop to the main street of Ginza. He also decided to start manufacturing his own watches, so he bought a factory and renamed it SEIKOSHA. In Japanese, "SEIKO" means "precision" and "SHA" means "home".

A few years later, in 1891, the founder of K.Hattori & co became a member of the Tokyo Chamber of Commerce. In 1892, he started to produce wall clocks under the name SEIKOSHA. In 1895, he bought the corner of the most central street in Tokyo, the current location of Wako. There he established a new store.

Pocket watches were very popular throughout the 1890s. Thus, Hattori created SEIKOSHA's pocket watch, the Timekeeper, in 1895. SEIKOSHA was the largest manufacturer of pocket watches, wall clocks and alarm clocks in Japan in the early 1900s.

But Hattori didn't stop there. He wanted to take his business one step further. That's why he started making a wristwatch. In 1913, SEIKOSHA completed the first Japanese wristwatch. The name of this watch was Laurel. At first SEIKOSHA produced only 30-50 wristwatches a day and its founder took the lead over the other Japanese watch companies.

In 1923 there was a very big earthquake in Kanto, Japan that destroyed the Ginza store and the SEIKOSHA factory in the Sumida area. Hattori was not deterred by the devastating earthquake and created his company from scratch. The SEIKO trademark was introduced in 1924.

In the same year, a patent protected the SEIKO trademark. After five years, in 1929, SEIKO became the official supplier of Japan's State Railways for timing railway operations. The first automatic wristwatch was introduced by SEIKO in 1955 and in 1963 SEIKO participated in some watch competitions. In these, SEIKO received 2nd and 3rd place.

The first Japanese mechanical diving watch was manufactured by SEIKO in 1965. The wristwatch accompanied the eighth Japanese research expedition to Antarctica in 1966 and its reliability was shown. This particular watch was watertight up to 150 meters underwater. A year later, SEIKO's first automatic watch became famous and won several awards.

GRAND SEIKO is the luxury wristwatch brand introduced by SEIKO in 1960. Furthermore, the Japanese watch company SEIKO competed with Rolex the Swiss watch company for the world's first quartz watch. The competition was won by the Japanese and in December 1969 they introduced the "Seiko Quartz Astron" quartz watch. SEIKO managed to invent a resonant crystal oscillator with a frequency of 8,192 oscillations per second and had a rate deviation of five seconds per month. Only 100 pieces were manufactured and cost 450,000 yen.

In 1970, Kiyoko Nakayama became the first female SEIKO watchmaker. In 1973-1974, a SEIKO automatic chronograph accompanied William Pogue into space. In 1973 SEIKO released the world's first LCD quartz watch with a six-digit digital display and in 1975 the first multi-function digital watch was released. To address the impact that temperature had on the frequency of the quartz crystal oscillator, SEIKO's "Twin Quartz" watch was released in 1978.
In this watch, SEIKO added a second crystal connected to a processor. As soon as a temperature change is detected it signals the oscillator and compensates. Consequently, the accuracy of the watch was improved to five seconds per year instead of five seconds per month. SEIKO and ORIENT established a factory together in 1985. A year later, at the Basel Trade Fair, the first Kinetic watches from SEIKO were presented. These watches charge their battery with the movement of the wearer's wrist. The precision of quartz watches was married to mechanical watches by SEIKO with the "Spring Drive" technology in 1999.

In 2005 SEIKO developed mercury-free silver oxide batteries and SEIKO NPC CORPORATION was founded.
In 2009 the company merged with SEIKO INSTRUMENTS INC. In the following years SEIKO created the "SEIKO Astron GPS Solar" which was the world's first solar watch with GPS.

The hybrid radio wave watch "SEIKO NEXTIME" was released in 2018. This watch has the ability to synchronize with a radio wave if using an app on the smartphone. In 2020, the SEIKO museum was opened in the Ginza area and in 2021, two SEIKO companies merged to form SEIKO TIME CREATION INC.

Over the years, SEIKO watches have been used for timekeeping at many sporting events such as the 1964, 1972, 1992, 1992, 1994, 1998, 2002 Olympic Games and the 1978, 1982, 1986, 1990 FIFA World Cups. SEIKO has an agreement with World Athletics for its watches to be on the world championship sporting calendar until 2029.

Finally, SEIKO watches from 1977 to 1983 appeared in the James Bond films with Roger Moore. The company also won a total of five "Grand Prix D' Horlogerie de Geneve" awards, in 2006, 2010, 2014, 2018 and 2019.