In December 2009, SEIKO started a year of celebrations marking the 40th anniversary of the launch of the world's first quartz watch, the SEIKO Quartz Astron. The celebration of this important anniversary started with an exhibition last December in Tokyo of 40 new designs, all inspired by the original Quartz Astron. Today, at Baselworld 2010, the celebrations reach their zenith with the launch of a totally new Quartz Astron, a watch that is both true to the heritage of the original but which, in its innovation and refinement, sets a new standard for the whole technology of quartz timekeeping…

On Thursday, September 27, 2012, the Seiko Salon in Tokyo opened its doors as usual, but visitors were greeted with a dramatic new display, featuring the new Seiko Astron GPS Solar. The center window of the Seiko Salon in Tokyo’s landmark Wako store in Ginza featured a huge montage of images displayed on about 50 screens, all showing the new Seiko Astron and its remarkable functionality. In addition, the store’s famous clock tower was lit up in blue, symbolizing the global reach of Astron’s astonishing GPS technology, extending to every corner of our planet, with its deep blue colour as seen from space…

At last, the search for totally precise time, everywhere on the planet, is over. By developing our own, patented, low-energy-consumption GPS receiver, Seiko has been able to create a watch that can receive GPS signals and identify time zone, time and date data using the global network of GPS satellites. It recognizes all the 39 time zones on earth. This breakthrough timepiece is called Seiko Astron. Like its celebrated 1969 predecessor which was the world’s first quartz watch, the new Seiko Astron developed under the supervision of Seiko Epson Corporation, ushers in a new age of timekeeping technology…