SPOILER ALERT!

Seiko

Seiko Group Corporation is a “publicly held conglomerate” [Deshpande] consisting of “subsidiary companies which are engaged in the following business domains: watches; devices solutions; clocks; high end apparel, fashion accessories and system clocks ….”

“Seiko produces all the components used in both its mechanical and its quartz watches. While it is known primarily for the Seiko brand of watches, the group also makes high-end mechanicals under Grand Seiko (which it launched on the U.S. market in 2010) ….” In 1979, Seiko purchased the brand name “Pulsar” from Rhapsody, which had previously acquired it from HMW Industries (not to be confused with its Hamilton subsidiary) the year prior [Klein].

For its 2023 fiscal year, the company reported 260.5 billion yen in net sales. In its 2017 industry report, WatchTime stated that watches accounted for approximately half of that Seiko Group total.

The watchmaker itself has traced its founding to 1860, when Kintaro Hattori (1860-1934) “opened a shop selling and repairing watches and clocks in central Tokyo.”

Select Horology

In 1892, Kintaro Hattori “bought a disused factory in Tokyo and ‘Seikosha‘ was formed. (In Japanese, ‘Seiko’ means ‘exquisite,’ ‘minute’ or ‘success,’ and ‘sha’ means house).” The company produced its first clocks here. As the success of this product line increased, the range of offerings was broadened in 1895 to include its first pocket watch, “The Timekeeper.”

Less than two decades later, the first wristwatch made in Japan saw its debut. At that time, “pocket watches were still very popular and there were only a few wristwatches imported into Japan.

[Seikosha], however, was determined to be ‘one step ahead’ and embarked on the arduous task of creating Japan’s first ever wristwatch. In 1913, … the ‘Laurel’ was produced. In the early days, the company was able to produce only 30 to 50 watches a day ….

In 1929, “Japan National Railways appointed Seiko as its official supplier. In 1956, the “Diashock” shock resistance device was first used to reduce the risk of damage to balance-staff pivots. In 1959, the first self-winding wristwatch was equipped with “Seiko’s proprietary ‘magic lever’ system,” which used a “simple ‘claw lever system’ efficiently to transmit the power of the oscillating weight in both directions.”

The following decade, in 1964, Seiko served as “Official Timer of the 18th Olympiad, Tokyo,” providing 1,278 “timing devices, all purpose built for the task.” The year after that, the company produced the “first ever Japan-made diver’s watch, waterproof to a depth of 150 meters. The winding crown was designed with a double packing structure to withstand high water pressure.”

Concurrently, Seiko had been participating in the Neuchâtel Observatory [Kable] and Geneva Observatory [Université de Genève] chronometer competitions since 1963. In 1967, Seiko was awarded second and third places.

… ‘Swiss horology refused to envisage even the possibility of a defeat on its own ground.’ On April 26, 1968, the Council of State decreed that the competition in the wristwatch chronometer category was suspended. It was never revived, and with that gone, competition in the other categories lost much of its interest. A few years later, the suspension was made permanent [Landes].

On December 25, 1969, Seiko introduced “the world’s first quartz watch” in Tokyo. “It was accurate to within 5 seconds per month, 100 times more accurate than any other watch, and it ran continuously for a year, or 250 times longer than most mechanical watches. The quartz revolution had begun.” Four years later, it reached another milestone with Caliber 0614, “the world’s first six-digit liquid-crystal display to indicate the time.

Capable of continuously displaying the hour, minutes and seconds on a field-effect liquid crystal display, .. it was first marketed in October 1973. The internally developed LCD was long-lived (50,000 hours) and had good contrast. A lamp provided enough illumination to make the numbers on the display easy to read even in the dark.

Not long after, a clear industry inflection point was seen in 1975 [Doensen]. Mechanical wristwatch production pivoted from a historic high, dropped by roughly ten percent by 1977, and followed on to an uninterrupted year-over-year decline that persisted for the next decade-and-a-half. Overall wristwatch volume increases saw slight acceleration, and quartz registered a then-measurable twenty-something percent market share.

But that was enough for Albert R Broccoli to go all-in with Seiko for his own first outing as solo head of EON Productions with The Spy Who Love Me [Broccoli].

En Route to 007

The Spy Who Loved Me premiered mid-summer of 1977 and was the next motion picture to follow on The Man with the Golden Gun, released during the Christmas season of 1974. The gap of more than two-and-a-half years between had been a tumultuous period. The “partnership between Harry Saltzman and Cubby Broccoli had dissolved” [Cork and Scivally]. Script-wise, a progression of no less than twelve writers had contributed to the effort, constrained to use the 1962 Ian Fleming title, but none of the story with which it was connected [Rubin].

At some point during this period, Mr Broccoli acquired his own Seiko LCD caliber 0634-5009, model CX001 [Deaton, Revolution; Time Art Piece] — advertised at the time as “the world’s first digital quartz liquid-crystal chronograph,” and part of a series that sold new at a price point that was higher than the Omega Speedmaster “moon watch” [My Watch Reviews]. Notwithstanding, as Mark Mills [Deaton: August 3, August 6] of Seiko UK told James Bond Watches in 2009, it had already been superseded by the time The Spy Who Loved Me went into production and thus never appeared on-screen.

Double-0 Watch Status

Seiko first became a James Bond watch through the premier of The Spy Who Loved Me on July 7, 1977.

Related Page

  • James Bond Watch Blog: “Seiko“

— Dell Deaton
Updated: June 10, 2024
January 13, 2024

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