Casio

Tadao Kashio founded Kashio Seisakujo in Tokyo in 1946 as a machine shop. The company's first success was a finger ring that held a cigarette, and its second was the 14-A of 1957 — the world's first all-electric compact calculator, which used solenoids rather than gears.

Casio entered watchmaking in 1974 with the Casiotron, a digital watch with an automatic calendar that knew the varying lengths of months. The company approached watches as an electronics manufacturer rather than a horological one, and that difference produced the G-Shock.

The G-Shock came from a single engineer, Kikuo Ibe, who broke a watch his father had given him and set out to build one that could not break. The specification was three tens: survive a ten-metre drop, ten bars of water pressure, and ten years of battery life. It took over two hundred prototypes, and the solution was suspending the module inside the case on a cushioned internal structure rather than mounting it rigidly. The DW-5000C shipped in 1983.

It became one of the most durable product designs in any category, adopted by militaries, emergency services, and skateboarders alike, and Casio has since added solar charging, radio and GPS timekeeping, Bluetooth, and full-metal and carbon variants.

Casio also produces the Edifice, Pro Trek, and Oceanus lines, and remains an independent Japanese public company.

Casio holds 122 models, from £25 to £919. Half cost less than £100, and a quarter less than £60. 23 of 122 are automatic. 35 are stocked by more than one retailer, giving 157 offers in total. Prices are checked nightly against the retailers’ own feeds.

1946

Tadao Kashio founds the company in Tokyo.

1974

The Casiotron is Casio's first digital watch.

1983

The G-Shock DW-5000C survives Kikuo Ibe's three-tens brief.

1994

The Frogman extends G-Shock to ISO dive certification.