Citizen, A brief history

Citizen has been around for longer than some may realise. Founded in 1930 they took over another company that was established in 1918 called SWRI (Shokosha Watch Research Institute) who were established in Switzerland. The initial hopes were to produce watches that were affordable to the general public (every citizen). Early on Citizen as a brand relied heavily on the watch technology coming out of Switzerland and being shared, this was the case right up until World War 2.

The above watch was one of the earliest from Citizen, it was made for the then emperor.

Citizen make every component in house, this has been blamed for the ‘fall’ of the Swiss houses in 1970’s as companies like Citizen have all in house tooling and parts. They can make a watch from start to finish without any outside house.

Citizen Watch Co Ltd is an electronics company and is primarily known for watches, although the Japanese corporate group also make small gadgets like calculators. Citizen is also the parent group for American brand Bulova.

Citizen has now became extremely focused on light power and namely their ECO DRIVE range. These watches work off light power and not just sunlight, it can be any light source.

In 1976 Citizen produced the Crystron Solar Cell, this was the first ever analogue quartz watch powered by light. Today Citizen light powered watches have evolved and the technology has come on leaps and bounds. The average run down of a fully powered ECO DRIVE watch is six months, meaning that without any light the watch can still run for this amount of time.

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