Oh What A Time... - #183 BIG Companies and ELIS RAN THE HACKNEY HALF (Part 1)

Episode Date: May 31, 2026

This week we’re looking at commercial entities that went bigger than their wildest dreams. We’ve got for you: Japanese consumer electronics firm Casio, how did Cadbury make that chocolate money and lastly, how Andrew Carnegie acquired insane wealth and then, incredibly, went about giving it away!And isn’t the world a better place for mass sporting events? AND IS THE WORLD TALKING ENOUGH ABOUT ELIS RUNNING THE HACKNEY HALF? Do let us know: [e-mail] from now on Part 1 is released on Monday and Part 2 on Wednesday - but if you want more Oh What A Time and both parts at once, you should sign up for our Patreon! On there you’ll now find:•The full archive of bonus episodes•Brand new bonus episodes each month•OWAT subscriber group chats•Loads of extra perks for supporters of the show•PLUS ad-free episodes earlier than everyone elseJoin us at 👉 patreon.com/ohwhatatimeAnd as a special thank you for joining, use the code CUSTARD for 25% off your first month.You can also follow us on: X (formerly Twitter) at @ohwhatatimepodAnd Instagram at @ohwhatatimepodAaannnd if you like it, why not drop us a review in your podcast app of choice?Thank you to Dan Evans for the artwork (idrawforfood.co.uk).Chris, Elis and Tom x Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Oh, Whatter Time is now on Patreon. You can get main feed episodes before everyone else. Add free. Plus access to our full archive of bonus content, two bonus episodes every month, early access to live show tickets and access to the O Watertime Group chat. Plus, if you become an O Watertime All-Timer, myself, Tom and Ellis will riff on your name to postulate where else in history you might have popped up. For all your options, you can go to patreon.com forward slash O Watertime.

Hello and welcome to Oh What a Time, the history podcast that asked the question. Was life really better before the age of mass sports participation events? For example, the London Marathon. For example, the Hackney Half, which I ran on Sunday. What do you live, Tom? I live in Hackney. Oh, thanks for coming out to support me. I've only known you for 22 years.

Well, Elle, can I shock you? You claim you run it? Well, I did watch the Hackney Half. I did. I went to the top of my road with my kids and watched, and I did not see him. Mr Ellis James coming past. I present to the court, is this all talk, Your Honour?

Do you know what the problem is? He was going too fast. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The guy who everyone thinks when it claims to have done it in an hour and six. I actually did it an hour and four. I was about two minutes ahead of him. They were still putting out the finishing cones when you got on. Yeah, yeah.

I might have been a bit early for you, Tom. There was a man who ran past rest as a jar of peanut butter who had quite large thighs, which could have been new, but I have no idea what he looked like. No, no, no. That absolute bastard overtook me, I hated him. Did he really? No, no, but being overtaken by someone in fancy dress is a humiliation that had never happened to me before.

When I ran the marathon in 2011, the London marathon, four hours, 20 or something, let's not go on about it. But when I was training for that, I was living in Chelsea. And frequently when I was running around like Battersea Park, I would be overtaken by a man with one leg. Was his other leg on a scooter? He was very fast. As a sort of general runner, my times are nowhere near the Olympic walkers.

Yeah. And Olympic walker will be able to do a mile about two minutes faster than me. You're like, wow, what? With that weird sort of gate they have. But yeah, it was an amazing event. I loved every second. And I told myself, I was only going to do one, one and done. And I'm going to sign it for next year because it was an absolutely fantastic day.

My friends had made signs. I wanted to make a sign that said only a half marathon you should be ashamed of yourself. But I couldn't bring myself to do it. It's funny because a lot of the signs are very positive. You know, only hotties run halves, all that kind of stuff.

But no, no, there were very few taking the piss out of the distance. That would have made me howl with laughter if I'd seen that. I genuinely, I'm not really into running. I find running quite boring, but I did really enjoy watching it and it actually made me think. I was watching with my friend Joe and we said,

I might do this next year. It did look like a fun thing to do. I think I'd need to do it for charity or something like that to motivate myself to train and do it. It's also the best way of getting in. Is it really? Yeah, I love doing it.

I'd never been above 5K until I decided to do it and was very scared of the distance, but thoroughly enjoyed every second of it. I can't get over the people that are dressed as peanut butter and stuff like that, though, in the baking heat when you're dressed as a jam jar or something or a shoe or whatever, and it's already 22 degrees or whatever. My friend Annie McGraw, I run with, got overtaken by an inflatable koala and she was like, come on, mate. Do you remember there used to be a guy who run marathons in a deep sea diving suit, but it would take him days. I remember him, yeah.

The marathon would be wrapped up. There'd be cars driving down the route by the time you finished. atmosphere is incredible. It makes how can you look like the happiest place on earth? I tell you what's really sweet, Elle, you might have seen this because my, I've got a seven year and a five year old. They stood by the side giving the runners high five. Yes. I must have high fived a thousand kids on Sunday. But it genuinely felt like it mattered to the runners. It's something quite nice about that moment that gave you that extra kick. And also the kids are loving it because you guys are superstars. You're running past. You're part of something. The kids are loving it. But what I was doing, obviously, as I was approaching children who were giving me a

I'd start shouting from about 50 metres before. Have you had your jabs? Have you had your jabs? Have you already inoculations? Are you carrying anything? Are you ill? Have you got any hand sanitised? Are you going to give me anything? I'm a top athlete, but I'm an endurance athlete. My immune system is low. What are we talking about here?

And then if I got the answers I wanted, I would continue. I will only be a high-fiving kids with gloves. I will only be... If your hand is not gloved, it will not be touched. High-five squirt sanitizer. High-five squirter sanitizer. Well, well done, Noel. So what was your final time? What was it? An hour in 55. That's very impressive. I was told by someone that anything sub two hours is very impressive.

Although, I actually did 21.1 in an hour of 52, but you end up running further than a half marathon because of the unique way the course is set. So, it's not a half marathon. It's more. No, it is. But, you know, like if you were carrying the racing line, you'd end up doing 21.1. But obviously, it's. It was very little recent. I mean, when I had the photos back, I've got my eyes shut at about two-thirds of them. And I look bad. What I like about the end of the Hackney Marathon as well, because we took the kids down there,

it ends in this sort of like big festival thing. Yeah. Where everyone is drinking pints from the stalls and also the food they have on offer is a collection of the most unhealthy food you've ever seen. So it's pizza, fried chicken, stuff like that. So clearly people get to the end. they're like, thank goodness that's over five months of hell and training.

Now I can just, you know, eat the least healthy food of what are known to man. When I did, the week before I did the Cardiff to Temby bike ride, which is 110 miles. And there's something about eating when you've done a lot of exercise. I had a cup of tea and a bacon roll in Patalbert, so I'd done about 35 miles about a point. It's just a normal cup of tea in a polystyrene cup and a normal bacon roll in a white, roll you could buy in any supermarket and just normal bacon. And I took a bite and I had a sip of tea. And I was like to my brother-in-law,

oh my God, why don't I eat these all the time? This is absolutely fantastic. I had a sausage roll in the pub after the half marathon. I was like, yeah, I'm actually sausage rolls are probably my favorite food, I think. I'm going to eat sausage rolls every day for the rest of my life. Whatever you'd been handed at that point. It's really weird what it does to you. Yes, I like food now.

golf food. I had, when I ran the marathon in 2011, I had the absolute opposite. I was really looking forward to to a pizza at the end of, I was like, that's my treat. When I've done the marathon, I'm going to go home and have a pizza. I reckon I took two bites of it and was like, I just want to go to bed. Slept for like 14 hours.

And you'd be like, oh, I couldn't, after the two long distance things I've done, I couldn't sleep. Oh, really? Well, would you say if you're sort of trying to get your, if you're a parent listening and you're struggling to get your kids into broccoli and healthy eating, what you need to do make them run for three hours. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Then they'll eat it. And then introduce the problem food. Then they'll really get into carrots. Oh, they'll eat it then. Oh, they'll eat it then. They'll eat it and they'll love it. I'll tell you why, actually, speaking of endurance runs, my son and I, who's four,

went on a little charity fun run at the weekend, one kilometre. He smashed it. It actually made me think, like, could he just go on forever? What if he never stopped running? Like Forrest Gump. My son has talked with, he wants to do the children's

park run, which is two kilometres, I think. But he, because if you do that in the half, you get a, you get a medal at the end. And if you do London to Brighton Bike ride, you get a medal. So he's now got a collection of my medals. He said, if I do the kids part run, well, will I get a medal? I was like, no. He went, well, will you carry it? And then at the end, just give me one of yours.

So there's going to have to be a ceremony. I have to run 2K with a couple of medals in my pocket. And then at the end, sing the anthem. Do you know what my son has up on his shelf in his room, by contrast, my award for UK dating columnist of the year, 2018, for when I had a monthly article in Cosmopolitan. So your kids have got medals for your marathons. That's what my son's got up.

Yeah, his dad's a sugar. I did. I went to it. I went up on stage, collected the award, got some. Did you give a little speech? I gave me a little speech. Yeah, it was great. Gets a flavour.

Of the speech I gave Yeah, yeah, yeah. What was the vibe of it? Sort of appreciative. To all the within I've loved. You should have, you should have Liam Gallag at it. About time, I'm the best sex columnist there ever was. On the best sex columnist there is.

And the best sex columnist there ever will be. And of that as well, of course. Well, well done, Elle. Very impressive stuff. You know what? It's also impressive, as always. The emails from our listeners, They are well worth tucking into, much like a pizza at the end of a half marathon.

Our email today is from Rob Hustwate and it is titled Porter Cabins. That's sort of fun email title we get on this show. Hi fellas. In reference to Porter Cabins, so this must be something we've talked about earlier. Oh yes, we were talking about how in our schools there were the rubbish temporary classrooms. Exactly. That were there my entire time at school. Yes.

Yeah, my school sim. Which could not retain heat, keep the cold out, they couldn't do anything. Whatever you needed them to do. It was the opposite. It was the opposite. Too hot in the summer, too cold in the winter. Exactly. But my God, I did some learning in March.

March and September. Oh, yeah. The Porter Cabin sweet spot. So Rob says, hi fellas. In reference to Porter Cabins, did you know that's actually a brand name? I didn't know that. I worked as a reporter on local news. newspapers and often if we mentioned porter cabin, it had negative connotations, local school

children freezing in porter cabins, etc. Every now and then, the news desk would receive a fax from portercabins solicitors reminding us that porter cabins should not be used as a generic term for a temporary building because it's detrimental to their client's brand. Also, puffer jackets. When a police suspect was described as wearing a puffer jacket and we reported it, we received a threatening legal fax from puffer accusing us of libel. This is all true, great podcast, Rob. So there you are. So we should actually have said port-caven. We should have said temporary building

because it gives the brand the bad name. I thought Puffa was a kind of jacket, like a design, like a Harrington or something. Apparently not. No, Puffer jacket is a brand. I did not know that. You should use that to describe it in a sort of collective way. So there you are. Wow.

Yeah. I don't know how much a defence that. Because basically, to my understand, all temporary buildings are Portercavins, aren't they, basically? They're like the Guinness of building, they've got a complete monopoly. I've never been in a non-porter cabin temporary building, I don't think. Yeah, exactly.

But you're not allowed to say it. So if Porter Cabin's legal team is listening, we apologize. If anyone from Porter Cabin's listening, how have you done it? Because it'd be like if we had an ounce of Porter Cabin's Nouse, we would be the world's only podcast. Yes. Can you imagine that? There's one podcast and it's us.

Do you think they've trademarked it? Can you not create any other kind of temporary building? I mean, it's just a bunch of sheets of like plywood, isn't it, knocked together? Is Tannoy, Tannoy system? Is that one of the... That must be a brand. Hoover famously is... Yeah, Tanoi is its public address system, isn't it?

Yes, that's a brand as well, isn't it? Yeah. I've got a question about porticabins slash temporary buildings. Did they have radiators in them? Were they plumbed in? Or were they literally just a hut that was putting next to the... They were sort of decorative. There was a radiator that just never seemed to be on.

It was basically a big box, wasn't it? Weren't they electric radia is? I feel like mine might have been electric. Yeah. Also, the windows on our port-gabin lessons had sort of grids across them, like cage metals. Oh, yeah, single glazed and gridded. It's like you're in America's a security prison.

trying to prepare for your biology for sats. Absolutely. It feels like you're about to be sort of like, some really hard questions in Guantanamo. That's what it feels like. The portal cabins are rolling off the production line. They're like, is this going to a prison or a school? It doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter. It's the same model. Designs all the same. Exactly. So thank you with that. That's genuinely very interesting, Rob. So port-cabin, puffer jacket. Be careful how you use those words. Otherwise, you could find yourself in court.

if any of the rest of you have anything you want to tell us, it can be as niche as that. We always love to hear from you and here's how. All right, you horrible luck. Here's how you can stay in touch with the show. You can email us at hello at oh what a time.com. And you can follow us on Instagram and Twitter at Oh, what a time pod. Now clear off

Okay One of the benefits of subscribing to the show via Patreon Is two bonus episodes every month And access to the full archive of bonus episodes But arguably, and you can argue about this if you want The top benefit of subscribing to the oh what a time All Time a Tier is we will figure out where in history Your name may have been

And up today, gentlemen, we have for you, Adam Price Well, difficult for meeky He was head to head to Cymoury, Adam Price Oh, is he? So I is very hard for me to get away from, it's very hard for me to get away from politics, I'm afraid. That's not a very Welsh name, is it, Adam Price? Oh, I didn't know about that.

Isn't it? Yeah, Price is a very Welsh surname. I think Adam Price, in terms of history, is the name of the boy who is in your class that you're with your mates. You go, who was that kid? What was it? What was he, sat off some history, always wore a Trilby. What was it, Adam?

Oh, Adam Trilby. Yeah, yeah. Oh, Adam Trilby Price? Yeah, that's the one, yeah, yeah. Picked up a worm in year seven. Yeah, I had a price, yeah, that's the one, yeah, yeah. I think founding father, I think one of the, I, for me, it feels like someone who is part of the early establishment of America. Yeah, that was part of that game.

He was absolutely obsessed with checks and balances. Yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe died in a duel, something like that, but I think it's that lot. It's Jefferson, it's all that lot. It's pretty early guys. It's Hamilton. Yeah, exactly. What do you guys do? Donald Trump has broken a couple of the laws of the US Constitution.

They were actually established by Adam Price, but he's a slightly forgotten founding father, and so Donald Trump's able to get away with it. His stuff never really properly stuck. Yeah, the Adam Price stuff is just advisory. It's not enforced. And his face is on that massive mountain. What is called?

Mount Rushmore. But it's just around the corner and quite small. And he lived until he was 118. The fifth founding father, but his face is on the side of Mount Rushmore, so no one ever takes photos of it. Exactly. No one ever goes round that side. Oh, look.

Oh, Adam Price. Oh, that's Adam. And Price. That's the one. Well, there you go, Adam. That's who you are. You're either the kid from about year seven or eight who left the school, and you can't quite place your finger on what you're.

his name was, or he was one of the founding fathers. Up to you, whatever you want, whatever you want to be. Adam Price used to turn up for school in year seven with a briefcase. Oh, that's a good one. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's good. And when the teacher said, what are you thinking about Adam? He'd say, just pondering.

Thinking about the US Constitution. If you want to subscribe to the show, here's how. Hello again, you horrible lot. Enjoying the show. Well, why not show the love by becoming a pageant? Patreon supported today. For a mere handful of fatherings, you can get ad-free shows,

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Stop dawdling. Well, this week we are talking about big companies. I've got an incredible tale for you later in the show. It is the tale of Andrew Carnegie. I'm going to be telling you all about cabarees, chocolate. Yum, yum, yum. And I'm going to be telling you about a company that I've definitely. that I've definitely used

and I would imagine pretty much every one of our listeners has used and Tom Crane has definitely used I'm going to be talking about Casio Oh I love Cassio I've got a number of Cassio watches I'm actually generally quite obsessed with them Yes I've got a

I mean there's going to be one watch I'm discussing in particular that I owned when I was a stand-up that I think you owned when you were a stand-up as well because it was the classic standard issue stand-up comedians watch the old F-91. Great watch with a little green light.

Yeah. Super. Now, as I said, almost everyone, certainly in Britain, who's passed through school in the past 30 years or so, will have had or used a Casio calculator or Cassio calculator and perhaps owned a Cassio Digital Watch. I definitely owned a Cassio Digital Watch. I have, as I say, a number of them now. Yeah, well, they're hallmarks of Japanese consumer electronics

among the world's most ubiquitous items of technology. and yet Cassio itself, not that old. It's about 80, about 80 years old as a company. So a complete youth compared to some of the other household electronics names. So Mitsubishi was founded in 1870. Fascinated by this, Nintendo founded in 1881. What on earth were they building? Well, I was just thinking about Cassio.

What are they doing for the first 40 of their 80 years? What are Nintendo doing in the 19th century? There must be 50 years of nothing. Yeah, just trilling their thumbs, waiting to... I have a fake feeling that Nintendo did game, but like board games and stuff like that. Oh, did they? I think that might be right. I think they were in the sort of games world.

This is before the sort of plumbers saving the universe thing, which really launched them. But I think they did sort of family board games and stuff. Well, there was SACO or Psych, I've never known to pronounce that when S-I-K-O founded in 1881. Panasonic in 1918 and then Toyota founded in 1937. So a couple of upstarts. Sega was only founded in 19. And Sony, originally known as the Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation, was founded in 1946. It became Sony in 1958.

And 58 was a good year for the future tech giants because Cassio was in April and Sony was founded in May. So what were your Casio watches then now you had? I had loads of Casio watches from primary school. I've been wearing watches. I was about eight. I actually feel incredibly naked and weird if I don't have a watch on. And I sleep with a watch on. Like I find it really odd.

That I can't do. It comes off. That's mad. Yeah. That is mad. It goes on the bedside table when I sleep. Got another time. And then.

Got another time at all times. Have you considered a clock? Nope. And I haven't. And I won't. I think that Cassio in terms of design are just so clever, especially for the price point. But they're just such kind of classic, interesting,

designs which a lot of it is a nod to sort of 80s nostalgia and stuff like that. Yeah. I've got the calculator one. I have that. I have one which is like a, it's got an early world clock. It's basically got a picture of the globe written on it. You can click buttons to make it go across. I have that one.

Yes, I had the, I had the early world clock one as well with time in 24 different time zones. Yes. Yeah, yeah. So when I was about 11, so if anyone came up to me and said, excuse me, what's the time in Ankara? I'd be able to like that. Like that. If you just give me, well, I say like that, I mean actually beep, beep, beep.

Yeah, yeah. I'm just, just flicking through. Ankara, it's about 25 to 5. The other one, L, was the water resistant to 4,000 metres or whatever it was when you were yet to get your first badge at swimming. Yeah, I mean, I never got past 25 metres anyway. I'd simply didn't need that watch.

The only thing that would have happened if I'd bought that watch is that if I'd have drowned, the watch could. have been continued to be an heirloom because it would have been able to survive anything. You're going to look to, obviously, you could have looked at the depth as you were going down. Oh, that's interesting. This will be the last thing I do, but I do now know I'm 2,000 meters deep. So Cassio founded in 1958. So it was in the sort of the, you know, it was just after the war. So Japan's been devastated, is defeated by the Allies, still suffering from the after effects of the atomic bomb, dropped less than a year earlier.

So how did Cassio, which was recently valued at 1.1.1. $8,4 billion, around $2.5 billion, come about what helped it grow quite as fast as it did. Now, in the early days, Cassio was a family business. The founder was Cassio Tadou in the Japanese fashion, or Tadau Cassio, in the English approach to sort of nomenclature. He was an engineer and an inventor from Tokyo, so who's born in the Japanese capital in 1917, began his working life as a lathe operator's apprentice, learning to make pots and pans and bicycle lamps. I like that. I like the fact that he did a proper job. and he created Cassio

Seza Cujo in 1946 to sell an invention which was a new type of cigarette holder. Now here we go because in 1957 Tadau joined with his brothers Toshio Cazuo and Yukio as well as his father, Shigeru, to expand Cassio Sezacujo and so to form Casio Computer Company Limited so they decided that Cassio had

from the constellation Cassio Paya had a certain exotic charm because the name rooted in Greek, mythology, I thought it sounded pretty cool. I love the fact that the company started doing something so different. Tadau's cigarette holder was designed to allow the user to smoke cigarettes down to the butt

without burning their fingers. That's helping to maximise economy. Oh, God. And so saving all during Japanese consumers' money when money was otherwise tight. So it was a perfect gadget. To damage your lungs as much as possible. It's such a gross gadget.

It's the grossest gadget we've ever discussed on it. But it may cause you enough money. need to move into other areas. Right. So that's the sort of mothership from which all of his watches came, which, obviously, you know, I don't know if Cassio was still in the old cigarette holder game. They've never seen it. They looked out of the smoking world and thought, people aren't smoking enough. They need to get more of that lethal tobacco into their lives.

How can we help them? So it's a calculator which grabbed his attention. So like I'd imagine the two of you, I had a Cassio calculator at school. Yeah. So he envisaged a modern electronic device, one which moved away from mechanical gears of all the machines, whether they were hand-cranked, imagine using a hand-cranked calculator or motorised, and instead using electric currents, relay switches and solenoids. So the resulting prototypes...

Cranking the word boobies into your calculator. So the resulting prototype was unveiled in 1954, with a consumer version launched three years later. The Cassio 14A calculator was the world's first compact All-Electronic calculator retail in Japan friend at half a million yen which was the equivalent of about

500 quid or 10 grand today So I don't know who was buying calculators that were worth 10,000 pounds What can you do? What could you do with a 10 grand calculator? It's going to make predictions for the future? That's what I'll hope. Popping your bank balance now

It'll tell you what it would be in 10 years. Being able to write boobs on a 10 grand calculator is not enough, is it? The one I always always obsessed with is the solar panel calculator. Yeah. For all the math you're doing in the park or around the beach. Bizar. I remember them? Yeah, my dad had one of those.

Did you do the big thrill of covering the solar panel? I just keep punching on it until it just went completely faded away. Yes. That was literally minutes of fun. That is the ultimate Chris Scullet School anecdote. Destroying methods of learning. The other thing is the advanced calculators you kids would have in like GCSE. 98% of the buttons, no one had any idea already.

Oh, yeah, yeah. And why they were there. Sin cost 10. I still don't know. Keep me into Google that. Yeah, Sokatoa. Why have your parents been convinced into buying this mini computer? Yeah, we used to have to get one of the, when we went into year 10,

we needed one of those calculators. I remember looking at this, just all these strange sort of symbols and things, and you're like, oh, I can't wait to learn these. And then two years later, they need GCSEs. You've used three of them. Now, this is, obviously the 10 grand calculator, not yet a device suitable or affordable for the everyday consumer. So most commonly bought by government offices and universities and large companies.

So in 1959, the 14A was succeeded by the 14B, a more powerful device, which hinted it more advancements to come. So new models and lines appeared throughout the 60s, notably the 001 in 1965, which is the first of a memory function. So closely identified the name Cassio with this very useful sort of arithmetic device.

Now in 66, Cassio began exporting their goods overseas. So first to Australia from September 66, then to Europe in March 67, and finally to North America from September 67. So exports led to rapid expansion of the company. So by 1974, they sold 10 million units. By 1980, it was 100 million. By 2006, it was 1 billion units.

By what year? By 1986. By 2006. That's funny, because I kind of thought Cassia might be kind of yesterday's company. Maybe a bit like how Nokia dropped the ball. They're like marketing. Yeah, I thought that, actually. But obviously, I don't use calculators anymore,

apart from on my phone, on the cut of the maths I'm doing is very simple. I'm assuming school kids at secondary school are still using cassio calculators. And I think young kids still have cassia watches. Yeah. I just bought a calculator for the first time in 20 years because my daughter, she's in year two. She needed a calculator. Like you, I didn't see a calculator until year 10 probably.

Well, I'd win in year 7, but quite a basic one. In terms of watches, though, they are hitting such a huge market of affordable, functional watches that it's like, they'll be selling so, you know, I can completely see that globally, the amount of like, that classic one we discussed earlier, L, the one we both had when we started stand up,

the amount of those, L of shift. Oh, it's insane, yeah. They last forever. I'll come to that in a second, yeah, but you can tell that they lost forever because I would routinely have to get the watch strap replaced. So the strap was more perishable than the watch itself.

Yeah, that's such a good point. And it was rubber as well. Yeah. The rubber had perished. That takes thousands of years, famously, if you know anything about... The export of calculators when you part the story,

as would be the electronic typewriters launched in 71, electronic dictionaries from 1981, and the electronic musical instruments and synthesizers, of course, cast your keyboards. Oh, great. First released in the 1980s,

but the real success was the digital wristwatch. this is what made the company what it is today. It was the Cassiotron, which arrived in November 19704, which heralded a new phase in consumer goods. Other companies had developed Quartzwatches before then, moving away from mechanical timekeeping. Psycho launched the world's first commercially successful quartz watch in 69,

scored a notable coup in the 1980s, one of the first American women in space, including Sally Rick wore their astronaut watch, but Cassio took what they'd learned from their calculators and innovated. So there was the G-shock launched in 1983. That's Cassio. Cassio do G-shock? Yeah. I thought they'd come up much later than 1983, the G-shock. I remember them when I was a teenager.

The F-87W, launched in Japan in 82, the rest of the world in 84. And then the F-91W, the stand-up comedians watch, which arrived in June 89. And Tom had one when he was on the circuit. I heard one when I was on the circuit because the stopwatch was so simple to use. Yes. And it had a light, which was just really useful. And also it cost about 7.19. You could set the stopwatch, L, for 20 minutes or the timer and you click it.

And then with like two minutes to go, you go, let me just check. I have got two minutes to go. You'd look at your watch and it would say eight minutes. Oh, my goodness me. How am I still got eight minutes to go? And you think, oh Christ, I have run out of ideas. I have literally nothing. It's time to go into the crowd.

What do you do for a living, sir? Yeah. Check back watch, it's still eight minutes. What do you do for a living, sir? Let it be something incredibly entertaining. Air balloon captain? Yeah. Please, please, please, please, please can you be into hot air ballooning

and then can you just talk about it? I mean, can you talk about it? I don't know, just quick look at the watch for the next seven and a half minutes. Oh no, it's gone up to nine. How has it gone up to nine? It's got worse. Now the F91W and its metal are all plastic variants, the black one, would go on to be the most sold of watch in the world

and won by everyone from schoolchildren to the Microsoft fund of Bill Gates and even a young Barack Obama. The problem was that the F-91W was so cheap, so affordable that it could be and was used for activities other than telling the time. So it was in the noughties at the height of the war on terror

and internments in Guantanamo Bay that intelligence services in the West began noticing a pattern, particularly among al-Qaeda members they'd captured. Many of the bombs and explosive devices that the group's cells were produced were built around the F-190.

W so it became known for times the terrorists' watch, yeah, or the Al-Qaeda timepiece. I knew that. The official watch of Al-Qaeda? Yeah, I remember it's like stand-up comics would often joke that it was the official watch of stand-up comedy, like sort of, you know, standard-issue comedians'

timepiece. And then it became known as the terrorist watch. I remember talking about this in dress room. Comedians were like, hey, whoa, whoa, whoa, we got here first. That's incredible. We needed to stop watching far less nefarious reasons. Yeah, just to be clear, that's not why I'm into Cassio. I'll just wrap that up now. But even the chaplains at Guantanamo Bay were that brand of watch.

There was no predicting that the wearer would go on to behave in a nefarious way. The point is that Cassio had made it possible for anyone to have a watch, whether he were the richest man in the world or a poor Afghan living through the turbulence of the Taliban, the American invasion 2001 and all of that. So it was this sort of amazing Japanese economic success story, But it is a slight salitary lesson in success in that once you've created something so hugely popular, you don't know what it's going to be used for.

Terrorism aside, I am still, I'm a big fan of Cassio. I think they've got such a nice range of watches. Yeah. I'd also love that. They're just that Japanese style. They've kind of, they've kept this idea of being cool and just like the way, the branding of it, it's just brilliant. It's just like such an amazing company.

I never had a Casio. But do I remember this right? that some models had like a full keyboard on that you would like try and press the buttons. I had one that. I remember I had one and it was effectively like a kind of electronic file of fax.

So you could write in your appointments. And it had a world timer. It had a timer. It had a stopwatch. It had an alarm. Obviously you could tell the time. And then also you could write in, you know, Saturday, midday.

I'll probably be watching football focus and eating cereal. I remember showing it to my dad and he showed it to a woman who's working with him and she in the office said, does your son have many appointments considering he's 12? Yeah. But it was like 1999. I had it for my birthday. So it was always really affordable step. And there was the one that was a nightmare for teachers which allowed kids to change the channel.

Oh, I remember that. Kelly would be brought in for a history video and then suddenly it would be on. BBC 1. Neighbours. There's Harold Bishop. Completely. Cassio, the company that does it all. That's the end of part one. If you want part two right now, you can go get it

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