The Casio Databank remains a really capable wristwatch from Casio that was initially introduced in the course of the 1980s and is still a bestseller to this really day aside from Casio watches. In a time before Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) and smartphones existed, a Casio Databank offered an inexpensive and convenient method to store vast amounts of info electronically, merely on your wrist. Databanks soon became much more than just electric notepads, nevertheless, with even one version that could be utilized as a universal remote control for cable boxes, television sets, and videocassette players! An additional model was able to display various time zones from around the world – a really nifty feat for the early ’80s.
As mentioned previously, these watches are still well-known these days, plus a retro-chic version is obtainable that looks just like the original Casio Databank, within the wild fluorescent colors fashionable at the time along with a humble black and white Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) screen of only a few rows and columns’ worth of screen real estate. Figuratively speaking PDAs had been much less sufficient for their overwhelming price which gave Casio the upper hand and they have been both utilized just about the same way making a dupe out of PDAs. Various colors intrigued the public and attracted them more towards Casio Databank which also brought up newer designs and fashion to match the style for nearly anyone.
These watches were really clever and innovative back then, throughout a period when manufacturers began rethinking the point of a wristwatch; it had been just much less than a decade just before that watchmakers started to incorporate digital technologies into their designs, and Casio was one of the first, introducing the Casiotron to excellent success back in 1974. Since then the company has continued to redefine what a wristwatch can do – and what Japanese wristwatches in specific are capable of: they helped change well-liked perceptions of Japanese goods, and wristwatches in particular, which have been commonly seen as cheap throwaway novelties. Much more generally, wristwatches have been felt to be fashion accessories than practical tools, a notion which the Databank series has helped to dispel.
Casio Databanks have been just the most recent of runaway successes for a business with a lengthy list of industry firsts under its belt. From humble beginnings as a well-liked manufacturer of cigarette lighter rings – as in, devices worn on the finger to light cigarettes (this being Japan, after all, a land abounding in love for gadgets and gizmos galore) – Casio went on to produce the first-ever compact all-electric calculator in 1957. Not long thereafter they introduced the initial graphing calculator inside the planet, and have been scoring a string of innovative products ever since, for example the initial digital cameras utilizing LCD screens on the market. Despite other well-received lines of practical utilitarian wristwatches like their Pathfinder and G Shock collections, Casio’s Databanks remain hallmarks of technological wizardry even in our age of PDAs and smartphones.
