The Casio Databank remains a really capable wristwatch from Casio that was initially introduced during the 1980s and is still a bestseller to this very day aside from Casio watches. In a time before Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) and smartphones existed, a Casio Databank offered an inexpensive and convenient way to store vast amounts of information electronically, merely on your wrist. Databanks soon became much much more than just electric notepads, nonetheless, with even 1 version that could be utilized like a universal remote control for cable boxes, television sets, and videocassette players! An additional model was able to display different time zones from around the world – a really nifty feat for the early ’80s.

As mentioned previously, these watches are still popular these days, and a retro-chic version is available that looks just like the original Casio Databank, in the wild fluorescent colors fashionable at the time plus 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 have been 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. Numerous colors intrigued the public and attracted them much more towards Casio Databank which also brought up newer designs and fashion to match the style for almost anyone.

These watches were really clever and innovative back then, during a period when manufacturers started rethinking the point of a wristwatch; it had been just less than a decade prior to that watchmakers began to incorporate digital technologies into their designs, and Casio was a single of the very first, introducing the Casiotron to excellent success back in 1974. Since then the business has continued to redefine what a wristwatch can do – and what Japanese wristwatches in particular are capable of: they helped change well-known perceptions of Japanese goods, and wristwatches in particular, which were commonly seen as cheap throwaway novelties. Much more usually, wristwatches have been felt to be fashion accessories than practical tools, a notion which the Databank series has helped to dispel.

Casio Databanks had been just the most recent of runaway successes for a business with a lengthy list of industry firsts under its belt. From humble beginnings being a well-known 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 globe, and have been scoring a string of innovative products ever since, for example the first digital cameras using 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.