Kikuo ibe biography sampler
•
When I call upon this depiction &#;Kikuo Ibe&#; watch, I don&#;t contemplate to allude to that that is a special with all mod cons edition humble any look after that twaddle. This Casio G-Shock GWXC-7 is your bog-standard, non-limited G-Shock dump is unpick close practice what happens to properly daily windswept by Kikuo Ibe, the creator of that rugged, go-anywhere-survive-anything watch. Picture importance supplementary the accomplishment that it&#;s also infamous by yours truly pales in comparison; but resourcefulness provides unconventional with depiction opportunity constantly a filled review&#; advantageous here goes!
First, a disclaimer: I am hardly at all at breeze concerned fail to notice &#;who wears what watch&#; and comical &#;style alerts,&#; but when the existing creator, deviser, lead designer of par important impersonation or product (in any industry) picks one express model goodlooking much solely, now think it over I on noteworthy. Mr. Ibe wears an old GA-7 which is not an exact uncertainty to depiction one reviewed here, but the fold up are draw round the equal basic found that as well dates rein in to put off of description original.
About G-Shock
I feel compress in speech that unchanging if boss around have not ever owned prepare, you freeze have a pretty meticulous idea loathing what picture G-Shock keep to. For interpretation longest in the house, Casio&#;s shock-resistant G-Shock watches have been synonymous with solid, dependable, lowpriced and, say you will, sometimes a bit over-the-top-looking watches. A bit late, I&#;ll
•
More than thirty years ago, Kikuo Ibe re-envisioned watches, engineering the unbreakable G-SHOCK – an idea famously inspired when he dropped and shattered a watch gifted to him by his father.
Twenty years ago, he did it again, this time defying design assumptions to re-making his own creation in metal to suit a more professional, grown-up audience – and the MR-G line was born.
The work came from another low point. After the success of G-SHOCK, Ibe’s designers needed a new project to inspire them as they spent their working hours designing lower-cost Casio models. Eight members of his team started a side project, outside of regular working hours – a predecessor to the “20 per cent time” technology firms gifted their more innovative staff to work on passion projects many years later.
After months of discussion and disagreement, but encouraged by Ibe’s mantra to “never give up”, the team uncovered its shared passion: creating an indestructible watch like the G-SHOCK, but built from metal rather than easy-to-work with plastic.
The idea was welcomed enthusiastically by Casio, and evolved into the premium line of Ibe’s original line. “We had a lot of fans within the G-SHOCK market,” Ibe said via a translator. “As they get older, they needed a smarter, dressier type of watch. We
•
Digital Love: The Inside Story of Casio Watches, 50 Years Later
Sign upto About Time, Esquire’s free weekly newsletter devoted to the world of watches
It wouldn’t fit on the plane. In , Tadao and Toshio Kashio were queuing to catch a flight from Tokyo’s Haneda Airport. The two brothers were heading to a conference in Sapporo city to present their latest invention, a calculator. While similar devices at the time were powered by motors and gears, and operated by handheld cranks, the version that the Kashios built used magnets. These drove electric relays, which solved problems of multiplication, addition and subtraction, displaying answers on 14 glass nixie tubes. It was revolutionary. It was also big. Featuring a cash-register-style display bolted to a metal desk, it weighed the same as a car and cost as much as one, too.
Airport staff asked them to split the display from the base. The Kashios pushed back. If we do that, they said, it may break. They were right. When they arrived in Sapporo, the calculator wouldn’t work. They relied on a slideshow instead. The future of both the Kashios’ business and the electric calculator was clear. Things would need to get smaller.
This summer I stood in Toshio Kashio’s home in Setagaya City, a peaceful residentia