The name Casio means something to thousands of people all over the world. The wide range of products the brand offers makes Casio popular in different areas and among people with different interests. However, there is something that unites all the products under the name Casio – they are all innovative, high-quality and they answer the customer’s needs.
History
The Japanese company Casio was founded in 1946 by the engineer Tadao Kashio. Nowadays we can buy Casio phones, computers, calculators, cameras, watches and even musical instruments. But the brand starts with an interesting product much different from anything mentioned above. It was called the yubiwa pipe and is actually a ring too. This pipe was used to hold your cigarette while keeping your hands free. Also this way you could smoke your cigarette down to its nub. Even though this could sound strange to us today, after World War II, Japan was impoverished and cigarettes were scarce. Kashio saw a business opportunity during those times. That’s was his invention was a success, people bought it and he earned a lot of money.
With the earnings, he started developing his first calculators but thanks to his knowledge in electronics, Tadao Kashio did not stop there. He also made digital cameras, computers, and electronic musical instruments all of which became bestsellers. However, today we will look into the Casio watches which turned out to be some of the most recognizable and wanted watches in the world.
The Casio watches
Stylish, reliable, affordable and innovative, the Casio models are the choice of watches for many people. And the creators of these watches seem to predict the future, the trends, and the technological improvement. Few people know that the digital watches of Casio are the predecessors of today’s modern smartwatches. Casio offered the first digital quartz watch in the world in 1974 and since then the brand continues to be among the top manufacturers of watches.
At this point, the company already had enough experience and success with the calculators it sold and decided to create a new product – watches. At first glance, it seemed strange for a calculator manufacturer to make watches but in fact, it was exactly the knowledge in electronics Casio had that helped create the innovative Casiotron. In the 70s there was a revolution in the world of watches as people started making more quartz watches than mechanical ones since the quartz watches are more reliable and precise. The digital quartz watch Casiotron used the so-called LSI technology which was developed for electronic calculators. This technology calculates the passing of each second, minute and hour. Besides telling time, the Casiotron could automatically calculate the number of days in each month and all this appear on an LCD screen.
Almost 10 years later, in 1983, another innovative Casio model was on the market called G-Shock DW5000C. The unique thing about this model is that it was the first shock-resistant watch ever made. Against the fashion trends during the 80s when most watches are light and thin, the G-Shock is massive and heavy. Nevertheless, its creators say it can stay whole even if you drop it from the top of a high building. G-Shock is one of Casio’s models which have a system powered by a solar battery. The women’s version of this model is called Baby-G and is also very popular.
Thanks to the G-Shock and the Baby-G, Casio gained the reputation of a brand that makes high-quality watches. Nowadays, the G-Shock is still highly popular and it is the favorite watch of many celebrities, too.
Casio and Hollywood
And speaking of celebrities, it’s important to mention that the Casio models appear on the big screen many times. Thanks to their innovative style, they look as if they come from the future. The creators of the sci-fi movie from 1985 Back to the Future take advantage of this fact. In this movie the main character wears the CA53W Twincept Databank which has a calculator, a calendar, an alarm, a timer and is even waterproof up to 50 meters. The watch has not only an LCD screen but also a keyboard on which you can control all those functions.
The above mentioned G-Shock we have seen in the Mission Impossible movies starring Tom Cruise and also in the action movie Speed with Keanu Reeves.
These are only some of the movies in which we see this Japanese brand. But besides the movie industry, many celebrities love wearing Casio. Some of them are Bill Gates, George Clooney, Eminem, Prince Harry, and even Pope Francis. For some, this might seem strange because the Casio watches are at affordable prices and those are people who can afford much more luxury brands. However, this only proves that what’s important is the quality and the price of the Casio watches is by no means at the expense of their reliability and durability.
Innovations by the brand Casio
The main strategy of Casio is to surprise people, to give them features and options which have never been associated with wristwatches before. That’s exactly what makes them so interesting. And the best part is that all of these features are practical.
In the dawn of quartz watches, Casio is one of the first brands who use this mechanism and create digital and analog quartz watches. In the 80s, every new model by Casio turned to be a serious threat to competing companies. The signature watches with keyboards from this period could be used not only for calculators. You could also input and save phone numbers, names, addresses and appointments. After Casio, other manufacturers also created such accessories but Casio stayed on the top of the list.
Some models of the Japanese brand also have thermometers and other have the options to translate up to 1500 words from Japanese to English. That’s impressive even nowadays but during the 80s it was completely unheard of.
Long before the mass boom of smartwatches, in 1991 Casio presented their model with a touch screen VDB-1000. It had a phonebook, notepad, and organizer. In the same year, we could find on the market watches made for people with an active lifestyle. They counted your steps, they calculated the burned calories and measure the heart rate and blood pressure.
Before the beginning of the 21st century, Casio already knew that our cellphones would become a more important part of our lives and that we would carry them everywhere with us. That was how in 1994 they presented a model which vibrated on your wrist when it sensed your ringing phone. The watches sensed this via an antenna.
A little while later there were also watches with GPS, Mp3 player, an option to transfer data from and to a computer and even ones with a digital camera. All those things are easy to find on the hundreds of different devices nowadays and most of us use them. But it will surely come as a surprise to many people that this was available in the last century. From collectors to successful businessmen, entrepreneurs and stars to people who simply love watches, everyone appreciates the futuristic way of thinking of the Japanese company Casio. Durable, high-quality, world-recognized and affordable to most people, these watches deserve the attention and reputation they get. And we are certain that they will keep surprising us in the future.
