While not enjoying the reputation for opulence of Rolex or the exclusivity of Breitling, Japan's Seiko watch company produces high quality products and has been a major innovator in its industry.

Seiko produced the world's first quartz watch, the first six-digit digital watch, and the first quartz watch to be powered by the movement of its wearer's wrist.

It's all a far cry from the company's origins in a Tokyo suburb some 120 years ago. At first known as K. Hattori & Co., the company started out as clock and watch retailers in 1881. In 1892 Hattori started producing clocks under the brand name Seikosha. Soon afterwards Hattori entered the pocket watch business, and in 1913 the company produced Japan's first range of wrist watches, using the brand name Laurel. In 1923 Tokyo was devastated by an earthquake and the Seikosha factory was destroyed, but the following year the company rebuilt its factory and began marketing its watches under the present name, Seiko.

Over the years that followed Seiko gradually extended its range to incorporate many of the innovations that were then becoming established in the worldwide market. The year 1955 saw the production of the first Japanese-made self-winding watches, and three years later the company began to produce quartz clocks of an accuracy suitable for use in the broadcasting industry. In 1964 the company introduced a portable quartz chronometer, a development that represented an intermediate step on the way to the devlopment of a quartz movement small enough to fit inside a wrist watch.

Seiko had attained sufficient status as a manufacturer of precision timing equipment that in 1964 the company was awarded the contract to become Official Timer at the Tokyo Olympic games. The company went on to fulfil this role at both summer and winter Olympics in Sapporo, Barcelona, Lillehammer and Nagano.

In 1969, the year Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon sporting a matching pair of Swiss Omega wrist watches, Seiko made its own technological breakthrough by producing the world's first quartz wrist watch. The 35 SQ Astron, which retailed for a cool $1,250, was the catalyst for a process that led eventually to Japanese domination of the world market in watches, and to the near-collapse of the Swiss watch industry.

Four years later the Seiko 06 LC was launched as the first LCD quartz watch with a six-digit display showing hours, minutes and seconds. In 1978 the company brought its new-found dominance home to the Swiss by establishing a subsidiary in Switzerland. The same year the company was named official timer for the FIFA World Cup, held in Argentina.

In 1999, the company came full circle by issuing a hand-wound, spring-driven wrist watch that claimed to report the time with the accuracy of a quartz watch.