Kikuo Ibe once dropped the watch his father had given him and watched it break apart.
Years later, as a young designer at Casio, he submitted a proposal that was a single line long: a watch that would not break, even if dropped. His small team tested prototypes by throwing them out of a third-floor bathroom window. More than 200 of them failed over two years.
Close to giving up, Ibe watched a child bouncing a ball and saw the answer: protect the heart of the watch by letting it float inside the case. The first G-SHOCK arrived in 1983.
