Tadao Kashio

Tadao Kashio (1917 to 1993) was a Japanese engineer and entrepreneur who founded the company that became Casio. Born in a village in Kochi Prefecture and raised in Tokyo, he trained as a mechanical engineer and worked in a valve plant and a radio component factory before founding the subcontracting workshop Kashio Seisakujo in Mitaka, Tokyo, in April 1946. Its early commercial success came from the yubiwa pipe, a ring-shaped cigarette holder, and the profits funded a calculator project that he developed with his three younger brothers. In 1957 the Casio 14-A, described as the first compact all-electric calculator, went on sale. He became president in 1960 after the death of his father and held the post until 1988, leading the firm from small manufacturing into calculators, cash registers, digital watches and electronic musical instruments. He died in Tokyo in 1993.