LONG –LASTING PRECISION Realizing world-class precision with in-house technology and skills

With the opening of Japan to the world in the 1850s after centuries of self-imposed isolation, many aspects of Japanese life had to change and one was the way that Japan told time. Out went the variable hours system and in came the western solar system that was used almost everywhere else. With this change came the immediate and pressing need for new timepieces to replace the intricate but now obsolete Wadokei and other clocks that were made and used throughout Japan. So it was that, in the last twenty years of the nineteenth century, a new generation of timepiece manufacturers came into being and one of the first was Seikosha, which made its first wall clock in 1892 and Japan’s first pocket watch in 1895.

From the very start, Seikosha’s founder, Kintaro Hattori, had wanted to build every component in-house and thereby have the ability to create every type of timepiece, from wall clocks in the 1890s to wristwatches from 1913 onwards. Thanks to the expertise Seiko developed in its first half century of timepiece manufacture, the company was able to manufacture even the most important component of all, the hairspring. Seiko had produced its first hairspring in 1940 and, with this expertise now in-house, sought to perfect this component.

A hairspring material resistant to temperature change and a smooth balance wheel that creates less viscous friction with the air were crucial to enhance the accuracy. Seiko decided not only to make a new hairspring but to make the alloy from which it was made. In conjunction with the metallurgy department of a leading Japanese university and thanks to the introduction of a new generation of machine tools, a new hairspring and a new balance wheel were created. Additionally, the need for a system to absorb shock on the balance staff was solved by the invention by Seiko of the Diashock system, which protects the delicate balance shaft from the extreme pressures exerted on it by the everyday use of a watch. Having all the necessary components, however, was not enough to enhance precision. A new generation of craftsmen and women were trained to make the micro-adjustments that ensure the precision of each individual watch and mechanisms that would facilitate this pursuit of precision were invented. The 1958 Lord Marvel had a movement that featured an easily adjustable, movable stud, but had a small diameter balance wheel. In pursuit of greater accuracy, the balance wheel was enlarged and isochronism improved in the 1959 Crown, but the stud remained fixed. Soon after, a new generation calibre, 3180, with a 12mm balance wheel and movable stud, was developed and it was this calibre that was used in the first Grand Seiko watch in 1960.

Grand Seiko was, therefore, the culmination of many years of development and was created based on the company's proprietary technologies by its own watchmakers. Only by using components made in-house and with the assembly and regulation of each watch being handled by its own watchmakers could a watch of this precision have been created. A legend was indeed born.