Grand Seiko

The first Grand Seiko was made in December 1960 by Suwa Seikosha in Nagano Prefecture as a hand-wound watch built to chronometer standards. Through the 1960s Suwa and its rival Daini Seikosha produced competing Grand Seiko calibres, culminating in the 44GS of 1967, whose flat, sharply polished surfaces defined the "Grammar of Design" that still guides the brand's cases, and the 61GS and 45GS Hi-Beat movements of 1968 running at 36,000 vibrations per hour. Production paused in 1975 and resumed in 1988 with quartz.

The modern brand rests on three movement families: 9S mechanical (from 1998, with Hi-Beat 36000 returning in 2009), 9F thermo-compensated quartz, and 9R Spring Drive (in Grand Seiko from 2004), a mainspring-driven movement regulated electronically, with a gliding seconds hand; the SBGA211 "Snowflake" is the reference most associated with it. Seiko made Grand Seiko a stand-alone brand in 2017. Mechanical watches are made in Shizukuishi, Iwate, and Spring Drive and quartz at Shinshu, Nagano.