Seiko is one of the largest clock and watch manufacturing company in the world, which makes both mechanical and quartz watches to suit every budget. Seiko has served as the official timekeeper for several sports events and athletic competitions including the Olympic Summer Games in Tokyo in 1964, the Olympic Games and the FIFA World Cups over the years in different parts of the world.
Unlike other brands of electronics that are manufactured and assembled in countries such as Malaysia and Taiwan, Seiko watches continue to be made and assembled in Japan, be it the movements or minor items such as the lubricating oil or the luminous compounds used on hands and dials.
Kintaro Hattori, the father of Seiko watches, opened the first shop in Tokyo in the year 1881. This small shop called K. Hattori and Co. Ltd grew with time into the parent company Seiko Corporation that has reached far and wide. In 1895, with the help of ten employees, Hattori set up the Seikosha clock factory. Within two months, the company produced one dozen clocks that were soon followed by the production of pocket watches. In 1899, it started manufacturing alarm clocks and introduced musical and table clocks in 1902. The first ever Japanese wrist watch was manufactured in the year 1913 nearly 43 years after the company came onto existence. In 1924, the name Seiko became the official brand.
Seiko Corporation has given many firsts to the world of watches by introducing world’s first quartz watches such as Seiko Astron and Chronograph, the first intelligent analogue quartz watch with alarm and timer function and the first LCD quartz watch with six-digit digital display and the first multifunction digital watch.
It also introduced the first self-winding wristwatch, the battery-less Kinetic watch that derives power from the movement of the wrist, the Perpetual calendar series watch among others.
Some of the popular watches from the company includes the chronograph collection with features of a dual stopwatch, the underwater series (for divers, snorkellers and scuba divers), the Flight Computer, Braille watches, the Le Grande sports series and the ladies jewellery collection and the world’s first talking pyramid clock among several others. Most Seiko timepieces are designed to be water resistant.
Over the years, Seiko Corporation diversified into three core companies, Seiko Holdings Corporation that handles the marketing, Seiko Instruments Inc. and Seiko Epson Corporation which manufacture the moving parts of the watches. Unaffiliated with each other, these are managed and operated independently.
Besides watches, Seiko also has a music division that produces other electronic devices such as digital synthesizers, metronomes and tuning devices for use in electronic music.
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