Born of a desire to create a watch that never breaks, the Casio G-Shock is revered by many as “the toughest watch on the planet”. But it is much more than that. The G-Shock is universally respected, avidly collected, and loved by everyone from Navy SEALS to tree-hugging tech nerds, a watch that gives new meaning to the word “durable”.
When development of the G-Shock began in 1981, Casio’s head of watch design was engineer Kikuo Ibe. Ibe pulled together a project team of just three members and called them “Team Tough”. There were really only three design criteria — the so-called triple ten — for the watch he had in mind: withstand a 10 meter drop, withstand 10 atmospheres of water pressure, and have a battery life of ten years.
It would take over two years to release the first G-Shock, the DW-5000C. Ibe and his team had to work through some serious difficulties on the way.