The history of Seiko began in 1881, when a young 22-year-old entrepreneur, Kintaro Hattori, opened his watch sales and repair shop in Tokyo. Only eleven years later, in 1892, he founded the "Seikosha" factory. In 1892 Kintaro Hattori purchased a disused factory in Tokyo and founded Seikosha (in Japanese, “Seiko” means “refined”, “minute” or “success” and “sha” means house). It is here that Kintaro Hattori produced his first watches marking the beginning of a company that would become one of the most important watch manufacturers in the world. In the 1890s the success of Seikosha's wall clocks increased and Kintaro sought to expand the scope of his business. In 1895 he created a pocket watch, the Timekeeper. It was a fundamental breakthrough, without which Seiko's future would have been very different, as it paved the way for the first ever Japanese wristwatch. At the beginning of the Taishō period, pocket watches were still very popular, and only a few wristwatches were imported into Japan. Kintaro was however determined to be “one step ahead” and embarked on the arduous task of creating the first ever Japanese wristwatch. In 1913 he achieved his goal by producing the Laurel. At first the company could only produce 30-50 watches a day but, for the first time, Kintaro had established an advantage over the competition. In 1923 there was the great Kantō earthquake, which razed the company headquarters and the Seikosha factory to the ground. He had to start over again. Immediately after the earthquake the company had created a completely new watch which was put on the market in December 1924. It was the first to bear the Seiko name, presenting for the first time to the world the brand which later became synonymous with precision and accuracy, innovation and refinement. Today Seiko fundamentally divides its skills into 3 different sectors: classic watches with the Presage lines, sports watches with the Sport 5 lines and Divers watches with the precise Prospex collection.