Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff Works dot Com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland, and today we begin a journey. Friends.
Speaker 1: We're going on a nice long hike through the history
Speaker 1: of a massive tech company. We're gonna talk about Sony
Speaker 1: and this is part one of a horror part series.
Speaker 1: I say horror because I don't know how many parts
Speaker 1: it's going to end up being. By the end, I've
Speaker 1: already got enough notes where I know it's gonna be
Speaker 1: at least three. Uh. I'm trying desperately to keep it
Speaker 1: fairly tight because I know you guys don't want to
Speaker 1: have this turn into the Sony Stuff Show, but I
Speaker 1: want to be able to cover a lot of the
Speaker 1: important moments in the history of this company. It is
Speaker 1: a very interesting story, largely because of several factors. One
Speaker 1: is that it's a Japanese company that came into being
Speaker 1: after World War Two, so that was a very obviously
Speaker 1: a very tumultuous time in Japan. And too, it ended
Speaker 1: up being a huge influence in technology in multiple ways.
Speaker 1: Three They introduced not just brand new types of technology
Speaker 1: to the rest of the consumer world, but they also
Speaker 1: ended up incorporating other people's ideas into their technology in
Speaker 1: ways that was innovative, and of course for they, they
Speaker 1: are a company that is enormous and has an umbrella
Speaker 1: across multiple industries at this point, not just electronics but
Speaker 1: entertainment as well. So we're gonna look at that. And Uh,
Speaker 1: I won't go into full detail on all the different
Speaker 1: subsidiaries of Sony because to do that would make this
Speaker 1: turn into truly epic series. But I'm gonna focus primarily
Speaker 1: on the main company, and I will mention when the
Speaker 1: company ended up making acquisitions or uh spinning off companies
Speaker 1: that ended up being big players. But those entities will
Speaker 1: get a full treatment in a future episode somewhere down
Speaker 1: the line. So let's get started, shall we. So when
Speaker 1: did it all begin? Okay, so that depends upon what
Speaker 1: branch of Sony you're looking at, because some of the
Speaker 1: subsidiaries actually pre date the company itself, because the company
Speaker 1: would end up making acquisitions of other companies and those
Speaker 1: other companies were older than Sony was. But let's concentrate
Speaker 1: on just the core company of Sony. Uh. One thing
Speaker 1: I can say right now, Sony was instrumental in getting
Speaker 1: consumer electronics to where it is now, there's no doubt
Speaker 1: about it on and it all really starts if you
Speaker 1: go back to April eleven. Now, that's when a man
Speaker 1: named Masaru Ibuka was born in Nico City, Japan. As
Speaker 1: a young man, he became interested in engineering and invention,
Speaker 1: and he even earned the nickname Genius inventor at Waseda University,
Speaker 1: where he was part of the School of Science and Engineering.
Speaker 1: He graduated in nineteen thirty three and he got a
Speaker 1: job at the photochemical Laboratory which processed movie film. So
Speaker 1: that's where he went after he uh, he graduated. Then
Speaker 1: you've got another very important player who was born on
Speaker 1: January twenty se that's Akio Morita, and he was born
Speaker 1: in Nagoya, Japan. His family expected him to carry on
Speaker 1: the family business, and that family business for many many
Speaker 1: generations was the brewing of sake and soy sauce. But
Speaker 1: he wasn't so interested in sake and soysas so he
Speaker 1: wanted to look into science and engineering and he would
Speaker 1: go on to attend Osaka Imperial University and he got
Speaker 1: a degree in physics. But then we have a very
Speaker 1: important event that happened that changed everything, and that of course,
Speaker 1: is World War Two. Now, during the war, Marita would
Speaker 1: end up joining the Japanese Navy and eventually achieved the
Speaker 1: rank of lieutenant. He met Ibuka, who was working as
Speaker 1: an electrical engineer. And now remember Abuca is the older
Speaker 1: of the two, and so Ibuka was working as an
Speaker 1: electrical engineer. Marita was a lieutenant in the navy, and
Speaker 1: together they began to work on developing some wartime technologies,
Speaker 1: including heat seeking, missile tech and night vision scopes. When
Speaker 1: the war ended in nineteen forty five, they would end
Speaker 1: up going their separate ways and for a while they
Speaker 1: lost touch. Now nine post war Japan was a very
Speaker 1: different place from pre war Japan. The country was trying
Speaker 1: to rebuild. It was really in shambles. At that point,
Speaker 1: Ibuka opened up a radio repair shop in a building
Speaker 1: that was not entirely ructurally sound. It was somewhat bombed out.
Speaker 1: It was called the shiro Kira Department Store in Nihonbashi, Tokyo.
Speaker 1: So remember that radios in this era used vacuum tubes.
Speaker 1: They didn't use transistors, so radio sets were enormous. They
Speaker 1: were big, clunky things. Uh, your typical home radio was
Speaker 1: a piece of furniture. It wasn't something that you would
Speaker 1: move around. You would set it up, you know, in
Speaker 1: some part of the home, and that's pretty much where
Speaker 1: it lived. Because it was it tended to be big
Speaker 1: and heavy, and because it has vacuum tubes in it
Speaker 1: somewhat delicate as well, you obviously didn't want to knock
Speaker 1: it over or anything. Now, I Buca's workshop was on
Speaker 1: the third floor of this department store building, and it
Speaker 1: was in a narrow room that also had a telephone
Speaker 1: switchboard inside it. He had a small staff working for him,
Speaker 1: and he was paying them mostly out of his own savings. Uh.
Speaker 1: And apparently the story goes that the staff was known
Speaker 1: to work very long hours, stretching well into the night,
Speaker 1: and that they would sometimes get locked into the department
Speaker 1: store because everyone else would be leaving and they would
Speaker 1: lock up and the folks over in a Buca's shop
Speaker 1: would be stuck. Uh. It would force employees to have
Speaker 1: to try and leave through fire exits, and according to
Speaker 1: one history I read, several employees never narrowly avoided getting
Speaker 1: arrested by police because the police were convinced these were
Speaker 1: actually thieves who had broken into the department store to
Speaker 1: steal stuff. So that's what's going on in a Bucca's world.
Speaker 1: There was a big demand for radio's, particularly shortwave radios.
Speaker 1: During the war, the Japanese government had banned short wave radios,
Speaker 1: mostly in an effort to prevent Japanese citizens from hearing
Speaker 1: Allied propaganda. So the shortwave radio business was now starting
Speaker 1: to pick up again because the war is over and
Speaker 1: now that band had been lifted, So there was a demand.
Speaker 1: There was, you know, business there. I Meanwhile, Akio Morita
Speaker 1: uh was planning on taking a teaching position at the
Speaker 1: Tokyo Institute of Technology, but then he read an article
Speaker 1: about Ubuka's radio repair shop, and he decided to contact
Speaker 1: his old wartime buddy and see if he could possibly
Speaker 1: end up working with Ibuka. In nineteen forty six, on
Speaker 1: May seven, Ibuka and Marita would form a partnership and
Speaker 1: create the Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation, also known as Tatsuko.
Speaker 1: They name uh taman Meda, Ibuka's father in law, as
Speaker 1: the president of the company, and they had a startup
Speaker 1: capital of one d ninety thousand yen. Typically at this point,
Speaker 1: I would tell you how much that costs in US
Speaker 1: dollars today. But it turns out this is really really
Speaker 1: super tricky to do because you have to factor in
Speaker 1: conversion rates between different currencies and inflation rates, and it's
Speaker 1: not like inflation is the same in Japan as it
Speaker 1: is in the United States. So they ended up getting
Speaker 1: too complicated for me to do, sadly, but I did
Speaker 1: read at least one source that said that the amount
Speaker 1: that two borrowed was around five U S dollars to
Speaker 1: launch the company back in ninet. Their goal was to develop, manufacture,
Speaker 1: and sell products that were of a higher quality than
Speaker 1: what was coming out of Japan's manufacturing centers at the time.
Speaker 1: So post War Japan, there were other companies that are
Speaker 1: making electronics, but they were largely known as creating things
Speaker 1: that were knockoffs of products that were coming from other
Speaker 1: countries as well and then being sold for less money,
Speaker 1: so essentially the cheap versions of stuff that you would
Speaker 1: find elsewhere, and they didn't want to do that. They
Speaker 1: wanted to create high quality products, like first run type stuff,
Speaker 1: not knockoffs. But that's pretty tough to do. It's not
Speaker 1: something that you just jump into. Um Ibuca actually drew
Speaker 1: up a prospectus to guide the company kind of like
Speaker 1: their their mission statement and their guiding principles, and it
Speaker 1: included passages like this one. We must avoid problems which
Speaker 1: befall large corporations while we create and introduce technologies which
Speaker 1: large corporations cannot match. The reconstruction of Japan depends upon
Speaker 1: the development of dynamic technologies. So this is you know,
Speaker 1: I mean it sounds a little grandiose, but this was
Speaker 1: really an effort to to take Japan out of the
Speaker 1: ashes of World War two and have it take its
Speaker 1: place as a leading economic power in the in the
Speaker 1: world and to make a real contribution to innovation in technology. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's a big, big order, you know, especially coming from
Speaker 1: a place where a lot of people were writing off
Speaker 1: Japan as being it will always just be like a
Speaker 1: place that that cheap stuff comes out of. Now, Abuca's
Speaker 1: job was to develop products. Essentially, he was the engineer,
Speaker 1: and Akio Morita's job was to handle personnel, financing and
Speaker 1: mark itting. They launched their first product. Actually technically this
Speaker 1: came out before Marita even joined on. There was a
Speaker 1: product that that Ibuco was working on, an electric rice cooker. Uh.
Speaker 1: This was a pretty funny thing. I mean, it was
Speaker 1: essentially a wooden tub. If you look at a picture,
Speaker 1: it looks kind of like a wooden tub or a
Speaker 1: wooden bucket with some metal uh plates on the inside
Speaker 1: of it. Not completely coding it, just like think of
Speaker 1: bands of aluminum that are bolted down and wired uh
Speaker 1: to this wooden tub. The aluminum were actually electrodes. They
Speaker 1: were screwed into the bottom of the tub, not really bolted.
Speaker 1: And Japan actually had a surplus of electricity at this
Speaker 1: point because during World War two the country had built
Speaker 1: more power plants in an effort to power the war.
Speaker 1: Uh effort and effort to power the war effort. I
Speaker 1: apologize for the redundancy, but they bought they built a
Speaker 1: lot more our plants in order to create more capacity.
Speaker 1: But then after the war, the country was essentially disarmed
Speaker 1: and they didn't really have the demand that these power
Speaker 1: plants could meet, Like they had more more supply than
Speaker 1: they had to band. So Abukas thought was, how about
Speaker 1: we create more stuff that uses power. Because we've got
Speaker 1: the power, that's not a problem. We've got the capacity.
Speaker 1: Why not create stuff that allows people to take advantage
Speaker 1: of that. And so they started really looking at doing
Speaker 1: these electrical appliances like this rice cooker. But there was
Speaker 1: a tight, teeny tiny problem, and that was that the
Speaker 1: rice cooker did not work very well at all. For
Speaker 1: one thing, not all rice is the same, you can't
Speaker 1: you know, just one type of rice does not necessarily
Speaker 1: cook at the same rate as a different type of rice.
Speaker 1: So the results depended on the amount of water that
Speaker 1: you had, the type of rice you put in the tub,
Speaker 1: and odds were really really good that what you would
Speaker 1: get at the end of it would come out undercooked
Speaker 1: or overcooked. So the product was ultimately a failure, but
Speaker 1: it taught them a lot while they were developing it. Now,
Speaker 1: one thing that wasn't a failure was that Marita and
Speaker 1: Abuca were able to bring on shows a Buro Tachikawa
Speaker 1: to handle the general affairs of the company. Also, I
Speaker 1: should just go ahead and say I'm doing my best
Speaker 1: to pronounce these names correctly, but I do apologize because
Speaker 1: I know I'm going to butcher some of them, but
Speaker 1: I will again, it is not through lack of care.
Speaker 1: It is only because I am not very good at
Speaker 1: pronouncing Japanese names. So what were Tachikawa's duties. Well, for one,
Speaker 1: he purchased rice on the black market, so they were
Speaker 1: selling a product, this this electric rice cooker that depended
Speaker 1: upon um having access to rice. But the issue was
Speaker 1: that food rationing was in place for several years after
Speaker 1: World War two in Japan, so Tachikawa would actually buy
Speaker 1: rice on the black market in order to market it
Speaker 1: along with the rice cooker. Japan's economy was still in
Speaker 1: turmoil at after World War two, actually for several years
Speaker 1: after World War two, and so the company was focusing
Speaker 1: on marketing products to an overseas market, not just the
Speaker 1: domestic market. They saw the need to cater to both.
Speaker 1: They knew that they were going to sell products in Japan,
Speaker 1: but they also knew that that was not going to
Speaker 1: be enough to elevate this new company, especially since there
Speaker 1: were a lot of established companies like Toshiba was already
Speaker 1: a company at this point and was a company before
Speaker 1: World War two. So Sony, because it started so late,
Speaker 1: or Totsuko, i should say, at this point, because they
Speaker 1: had not adopted the name Sony, they knew they were
Speaker 1: going to have to market their stuff to to an
Speaker 1: audience beyond just Japan if they wanted to have success,
Speaker 1: so they started looking at having an overseas UH presence,
Speaker 1: at least a market, not a physical presence. At this point,
Speaker 1: other Japanese companies were already doing this, but they were
Speaker 1: again largely selling those cheaper products, and Marita and Abuca
Speaker 1: wanted to go beyond that. But that wasn't easy because
Speaker 1: the company, Tatsuko didn't have any real machinery to speak
Speaker 1: of and not enough capital to purchase equipment, so instead,
Speaker 1: the employees ended up salvaging stuff from rubble leftover from
Speaker 1: the war, and they would use it in place of
Speaker 1: normal tools, like there were stories about using springs that
Speaker 1: they found as screwdrivers, so it's kind of crazy. They
Speaker 1: also used telephone cables rather than electrical wires for some
Speaker 1: of their prototypes, which created extra challenges engineering challenges, but
Speaker 1: they did that because there were down to telephone wires
Speaker 1: that they could salvage, and then since they were just
Speaker 1: creating prototypes, not indo products, they figured, well, we might
Speaker 1: as well just use this and wait until we've developed
Speaker 1: a good product before we switch over to actual electrical wiring.
Speaker 1: Another big challenge actually came from the Japanese government itself,
Speaker 1: multiple challenges actually, because at this time, the Japanese government,
Speaker 1: which they still had an emperor and impress at this time. Uh,
Speaker 1: the Japanese government took a very hands on approach to
Speaker 1: Japanese businesses and their operation. Uh. There was a Ministry
Speaker 1: of Finance and there were other ministries as well that
Speaker 1: all the businesses had to work with and obey, and
Speaker 1: it made it really complicated, especially if you wanted to
Speaker 1: have products sold overseas, and made it challenging. But even
Speaker 1: more than that, the Japanese government had also decided to
Speaker 1: make a switch from one end currency to a new
Speaker 1: yen currency. But that required all businesses to start to
Speaker 1: earn new yen currency in order to stay solvent. You
Speaker 1: couldn't just collect old yen notes. They wouldn't be good
Speaker 1: for much longer. So uh, it kind of kind of
Speaker 1: put a ticking time bomb on companies. They had to
Speaker 1: make sure that they were selling enough products in that
Speaker 1: time to gather enough new currency to remain afloat. So
Speaker 1: that was something that most companies don't have to worry about,
Speaker 1: and it's a little unique to this particular situation. One
Speaker 1: of the products that did earn the company some money
Speaker 1: was an electrically heated cushion. Now, that cushion was a
Speaker 1: very simple design. It was a mesh wire grid sandwich
Speaker 1: between sheets of paper inside a leather cushion with some padding.
Speaker 1: So if you know your electronics, you know if you
Speaker 1: pass current through an electrical wire, some of that energy
Speaker 1: get is lost due to giving off of heat its resistance. Right,
Speaker 1: the greater the resistance the wire, the more that electricity
Speaker 1: is converted into heat. This is the basis for things
Speaker 1: like electrical heaters, where you have a coil that is
Speaker 1: really just a resistor that's coiled around and around and
Speaker 1: around and around. You run electric through the coil and
Speaker 1: the coil heats up as a result, and that's where
Speaker 1: you generate electric heat. Well, that was the same basic
Speaker 1: premise of the cushion, except instead of being a coil,
Speaker 1: it's a grid. But this particular product was maybe a
Speaker 1: little too simple because it didn't have a thermostat or
Speaker 1: any way of controlling the temperature whatsoever, which meant that
Speaker 1: the cushion could and did overheat. Also, the voltage from
Speaker 1: Japan's power plants wasn't steady, so at night you could
Speaker 1: end up having power surges, and sometimes the cushions would
Speaker 1: short out and scorch things like people's pants, or their beds,
Speaker 1: or their grandmother's or you know, et cetera. Now, Ibuka
Speaker 1: had said that it was not a good idea for
Speaker 1: his brand new company that he was trying to get
Speaker 1: off the ground to be associated with a substandard cushion,
Speaker 1: So he did the reasonable thing. He marketed the cushion
Speaker 1: under a fictional company name called the Ginza Heating Company.
Speaker 1: You know, instead of not putting out a defective product,
Speaker 1: just put a fake company name on the defective product
Speaker 1: and your home free. That's brilliant, but BALTI are not.
Speaker 1: The cushion actually sold well enough to keep the company
Speaker 1: kind of afloat. Meanwhile, when under their actual Totsuko name,
Speaker 1: the real company name, the company began to sell record pickups. Now,
Speaker 1: a record pickup is also known as a needle. It's
Speaker 1: what you would have on a on a turntable for
Speaker 1: vinyl albums. And I'm sure many of you are familiar
Speaker 1: with this, but just in case you aren't, If you
Speaker 1: folks out there who have never really messed with a
Speaker 1: a record player vinyl turntable type deal, what you have
Speaker 1: is you've got an arm and on the end of
Speaker 1: that arm is a needle. The needle actually fits within
Speaker 1: grooves inside the vinyl record, and it vibrates according to
Speaker 1: changes in that groove, and there's a transducer that the
Speaker 1: needle is attached to, and the transducer job is to
Speaker 1: take this kinetic energy, this vibration translated into electricity, send
Speaker 1: that signal to an amp, which increases the power of
Speaker 1: the signal, and then goes on to speakers which then
Speaker 1: can play this signal, and then we get to listen
Speaker 1: to music or talk or whatever is on the vinyl album.
Speaker 1: So UH Tatsuko began to market these record pickups and
Speaker 1: those also record players were not legal during the war,
Speaker 1: and the reason for them was nothing to do with propaganda.
Speaker 1: It had to do with the fact that the components
Speaker 1: that you would use to make record players UH could
Speaker 1: be used for other things that the military could take
Speaker 1: advantage of. UH. You know, resources were scarce, so you
Speaker 1: could not use them for frivolous purposes like creating record players.
Speaker 1: But now in the post war era, everything was changing.
Speaker 1: Towards the end of nineteen Totsuko had to move from
Speaker 1: the department store they had been in to a small
Speaker 1: factory uh. It was only temporary, however, as the factory
Speaker 1: owner decided that they needed to leave, he actually ordered
Speaker 1: Tatsuko to vacate the factory area that they he had
Speaker 1: set aside for them uh. And one of the reasons
Speaker 1: that might have played a part in this is that
Speaker 1: there was some electricity ration ing going on at the time,
Speaker 1: and it was possible that the factory owner was worried
Speaker 1: that this company, which was known for having employees who
Speaker 1: would work long into the night, might end up using
Speaker 1: up his electricity ration and he wouldn't have or he'd
Speaker 1: had to pay extra in order to conduct his own business.
Speaker 1: So they got the boot um and Ibuca and Marita
Speaker 1: were searching for a new facility, one that would be
Speaker 1: large enough to have everyone in the company working in
Speaker 1: the same location at the same time, because they were
Speaker 1: kind of spread out among three different locations at this
Speaker 1: point and it made collaborating very difficult. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: they were able to finally create that, although it didn't
Speaker 1: last for very long in the sense that the company
Speaker 1: kept growing and they would end up building news sites,
Speaker 1: so you didn't have everybody under the same roof for
Speaker 1: very long. You they grew too big for that. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Japan's n h K, which was there that or is
Speaker 1: the National Broadcast Station, hired on Tutsuko to convert wire
Speaker 1: military wireless equipment into receivers for broadcasting. Uh So, in
Speaker 1: other words, the idea was that, well, we've got all
Speaker 1: these military radio installations that we could convert over to
Speaker 1: broadcast installations, but we need some help. Um that work
Speaker 1: was really steady, so Tutsuko began to make a profit.
Speaker 1: They weren't just staying afloat, they were actually doing well
Speaker 1: in the company would relocate to Shinagawa, Tokyo. They took
Speaker 1: over warehouse space that had belonged to the Nipon Corburetor company,
Speaker 1: and the Sony Corporation is still at that location today,
Speaker 1: or at least they have a location there today. Uh
Speaker 1: In the period between nineteen and nineteen fifty, Abuca wanted
Speaker 1: to make a successful consumer electronics product and not just
Speaker 1: a radio, so he started by looking into the possibility
Speaker 1: of producing wire recorders. Now, a wire recorder is sort
Speaker 1: of like a tape recorder, but while tape stores information
Speaker 1: magnetically onto plastic film that has a you know, ferromagnetic
Speaker 1: material on it, like a powder essentially that's been bonded
Speaker 1: to the plastic film. Wire recorders use magnetic steel wire
Speaker 1: to store info, so you're still storing the information magnetically,
Speaker 1: but instead of it being on tape, it's on an
Speaker 1: actual physical wire. The company actually reverse engineered military wire
Speaker 1: recorders and began to experiment with them, but then it
Speaker 1: Juca and Marita got a demonstration of a tape recorder
Speaker 1: from occupation forces at the NHK headquarters, so they were
Speaker 1: able to they had not seen this in person before.
Speaker 1: But then they saw a tape recorder, which had already
Speaker 1: been invented obviously, but they had not had experience with it,
Speaker 1: and they were so impressed by the quality of the
Speaker 1: tape recorder, which seemed so much better than the wire
Speaker 1: recorders of the day, they decided their company should produce
Speaker 1: the first Japanese tape recorder, and they abandoned the idea
Speaker 1: of the wire recorder entirely. Their first experiments with tape
Speaker 1: recorders involved using rice paste to add here magnetic dust
Speaker 1: to paper strips. Now the prototype didn't work because the
Speaker 1: magnetic dust they used was actually too strong for the
Speaker 1: tape head to write to. So in other words, they
Speaker 1: created a tape that had very um electro magnetic magnetic
Speaker 1: doest well really just magnetic dost, not electro magnetic dust.
Speaker 1: But they had magnetic dust that was so strong that
Speaker 1: you couldn't you couldn't use a tape head to right
Speaker 1: new information to it. You would just get this loud
Speaker 1: noise because the magnetic properties were too strong. So they
Speaker 1: started looking around for an alternative to the dust that
Speaker 1: they had been using, and they decided that they should
Speaker 1: use ferric oxide. But there was a problem. They didn't
Speaker 1: have a supply of ferric oxide. So they did the
Speaker 1: next best thing. They bought a couple of bottles of
Speaker 1: ox oxalic ferrite and then they processed it to create
Speaker 1: ferric oxide. And by processing, I mean they poured the
Speaker 1: oxalic ferrite into a frying pan and they heated the
Speaker 1: frying pan on a stovetop until it converted into ferric
Speaker 1: oxide oxalic farright. By the way, it's kind of like
Speaker 1: a yellowish powder, So essentially they were uh cooking this
Speaker 1: until it turned sort of a brownish black. They actually
Speaker 1: had one person who was particularly good at spotting changes
Speaker 1: in color, and it was his job to monitor the
Speaker 1: stuff to make sure that they took it off the
Speaker 1: heat once it reached a certain level of processing. Now
Speaker 1: it took more time for the engineers to find a
Speaker 1: way to produce powder fine enough to be useful and
Speaker 1: then find a way to adhere it to the actual tape.
Speaker 1: They even consulted with a cosmetics company that was known
Speaker 1: for making a face powder for women and tried to
Speaker 1: see if they had any hints as to create a
Speaker 1: powder fine enough for the purposes of creating tape. But
Speaker 1: when the cosmetics company heard how fine a powder they needed,
Speaker 1: they said, we would never make that because it's so
Speaker 1: fine that it would just blow right off of a
Speaker 1: lady's cheek. It wouldn't do any good, so we can't
Speaker 1: help you. It took them a lot of trial, trial
Speaker 1: and error experiments, but they were able to produce a
Speaker 1: tape that could record and reproduce sound. So by the
Speaker 1: company had created a prototype, and the following year nine
Speaker 1: fifty they had early models of what would become their
Speaker 1: actual consumer tape recorder, the first in Japan and one
Speaker 1: of the earliest for consumers. That prototype they had was
Speaker 1: not so great. I mean, it could record and it
Speaker 1: could replay sound, but if the quality wasn't really there,
Speaker 1: which is why they had to continue developing. So n
Speaker 1: SoC creates the sawny tape recording medium s o in
Speaker 1: I dash tape. They also launched the G type tape recorder,
Speaker 1: which they intended for institutional use, like it was going
Speaker 1: to be used in medical facilities and educational facilities that
Speaker 1: sort of stuff. It was not the G type was
Speaker 1: not being marketed to home consumers. Instead, they developed a
Speaker 1: second type of recorder called the H type recorder that
Speaker 1: was for home use, and the press for the products
Speaker 1: said that they would be useful for talking paper and
Speaker 1: talking magazines and that they might one day replace the phonograph,
Speaker 1: which turned out to be true, but it was one
Speaker 1: of those times where the the pr was kind of
Speaker 1: making some grandiose promises. It just so happens that it
Speaker 1: did work out that way. Eventually took some time, though,
Speaker 1: and and of course the type of tape that they
Speaker 1: were using at that time was very different than the
Speaker 1: plastic film tape that would be used later on. During
Speaker 1: the era where cassettes became huge, uh figuratively speaking, literally,
Speaker 1: they were actually fairly small. In nineteen fifty, news of
Speaker 1: how Bell Labs employees had pioneered the transistor had made
Speaker 1: it to Japan. So the transistor does the same job
Speaker 1: as vacuum tubes, but is a much smaller form factor
Speaker 1: and it's a solid state type of electronic as opposed
Speaker 1: to the vacuum tube approach. And Abuca and Marita had
Speaker 1: heard of it, and initially they were kind of skeptical
Speaker 1: that transistor would ever be practical, that you would ever
Speaker 1: use it in anything beyond like some experimental prototype type stuff.
Speaker 1: But in nineteen fifty two, Ibuka would actually make a
Speaker 1: trip to the United States. It was his first trip there.
Speaker 1: Started off a bit rough. Ibuka was not fluent in English,
Speaker 1: and he had some challenges getting to New York. He
Speaker 1: actually flew into Anchorage, Alaska first, and he experienced some
Speaker 1: things that were shocking to him, including some xenophobia, uh
Speaker 1: some sphere of foreigners in the United States that he
Speaker 1: wasn't anticipating when he got there. Um. But he made
Speaker 1: his way to New York and then he was informed
Speaker 1: that Western Electric, the parent company of Bell Labs, would
Speaker 1: be happy to license the transistor technology to companies willing
Speaker 1: to pay royalties. So, in other words, instead of having
Speaker 1: this technology and keeping it proprietary. Uh Western Electric was saying, no, no,
Speaker 1: anyone can use this technology. You just have to pay
Speaker 1: us a licensing fee and then you'll be allowed to
Speaker 1: uh TO to manufacture transistors and and you can completely
Speaker 1: you can totally use the methodologies that we're talking about.
Speaker 1: You have to develop your own manufacturing system. You know,
Speaker 1: you don't get to use our our factories or anything,
Speaker 1: but you can use the technology without fear of being sued,
Speaker 1: which is that's the way patents are supposed to work.
Speaker 1: Uh Abuka realized that the transistor could serve as an
Speaker 1: engineering challenge for his team and in a sense keep
Speaker 1: up their morale, which is kind of funny, like he
Speaker 1: looked at the transistor and thought, well, it may not
Speaker 1: ever work for consumer technology, but if I give my
Speaker 1: team the challenge of take this type of technology and
Speaker 1: develop it so that we can put it into a
Speaker 1: radio in a couple of years and sell that to consumers,
Speaker 1: it would be the type of challenge that would occupy
Speaker 1: his team, keep them busy, keep their minds active, keep
Speaker 1: their morale up. Because his worry was that the tape
Speaker 1: recorder business had become defined. They knew what they were
Speaker 1: doing they were no longer innovating in that space. They
Speaker 1: were producing in that space, and he was worried that
Speaker 1: just producing would not keep his team happy because they
Speaker 1: were creative individuals and he needed to make sure that
Speaker 1: they were doing something that they found fulfilling, which apparently
Speaker 1: involves giving them really tough engine herring challenges. It's kind
Speaker 1: of an interesting approach. Now, this was all easier said
Speaker 1: than done because of economic and political issues. You know
Speaker 1: I mentioned earlier. In Japan, you have these ministries that
Speaker 1: end up being involved in corporate business, and that is
Speaker 1: an impediment. Also, there were several large companies in Japan
Speaker 1: that had already started to work on the transistor. They
Speaker 1: were paying our CIA for technical expertise to guide them
Speaker 1: in that and the Ministry of Trade and Industry representatives
Speaker 1: were skeptical that Tatsuko, which was a very small company
Speaker 1: compared to these larger ones in Japan, would ever be
Speaker 1: able to make a significant contribution using the transistor. And
Speaker 1: since the Ministry of Trade and Industry would issue licenses
Speaker 1: for manufacturing transistors, this was a problem. If they don't
Speaker 1: have confidence in the company, they won't grant the license. Now,
Speaker 1: Marita would later visit the U s Ibuca had already visited,
Speaker 1: now Marita's visiting and Uh and he visited Western Electric
Speaker 1: and eventually the company received permission from the Ministry of
Speaker 1: Trade and Industry to manufacture transistors, although they almost didn't
Speaker 1: because when their representatives found out that Tatsuko executives had
Speaker 1: met with Americans to talk about licensing the patent without
Speaker 1: first getting permission from the Japanese government, they had a
Speaker 1: little bit of a fit and it was almost the
Speaker 1: case that they would forbid Tatsuko from going forward with this.
Speaker 1: But fortunately for Tatsuko, that department was reorganized in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty three, so once that reorg happened, things became a
Speaker 1: little more favorable towards Trtsuko and other Japanese companies trying
Speaker 1: to work with foreign companies, and so a Buca decided
Speaker 1: that the first application of the transistor technology should be
Speaker 1: a transistor radio, and the company started to work on
Speaker 1: that idea. In nineteen fifty four, a United States company
Speaker 1: called Regency would market the first commercial transistor radio. This
Speaker 1: actually came as a blow to Abuka, who really wanted
Speaker 1: his company to create the first commercial transistor radio, and
Speaker 1: they would do so, but they would do it the
Speaker 1: next year in nineteen UH. They first were going to
Speaker 1: launch a radio earlier than that, but it turned out
Speaker 1: that their design had a major flaw. UH. They had
Speaker 1: a plastic grill on the front of these radios, and
Speaker 1: it turned out that when the temperatures would get warm enough,
Speaker 1: the grill would just peel away from the radio, so
Speaker 1: that launch was completely botched. They had to scrap it. UH.
Speaker 1: This would actually become an issue multiple times throughout the
Speaker 1: history of Sony, where in those early days, UH, they
Speaker 1: would develop a type of technology in one time, one
Speaker 1: part of the year, and it would work fine because
Speaker 1: they were designing it in that time of year. They
Speaker 1: would get it to the performance that they wanted, and
Speaker 1: then the seasons would change and the temperature would either
Speaker 1: increase or decrease, you know, you go into summer or
Speaker 1: you go into winter or whatever, and then they would
Speaker 1: find out that the product they had designed no longer
Speaker 1: worked the way they intended it to because the temperatures
Speaker 1: were too different. So it took a while before they
Speaker 1: had found an approach where they could develop technology at
Speaker 1: different temperatures and make sure it's still worked properly. That's
Speaker 1: one of those things about especially about early electronics, but
Speaker 1: really anytime, the more precise you get, the narrower your
Speaker 1: parameters are, and you have to start really working with
Speaker 1: a lot of engineering challenges to make sure that the
Speaker 1: thing that you're creating actually works the way you wanted
Speaker 1: to in all reasonable conditions. Uh. One thing that Tatsuko
Speaker 1: really prided itself on was that their transistor radio included
Speaker 1: transistors that the company itself had made. Tatsuko had made
Speaker 1: the transistors found in the transistor radio that they marketed,
Speaker 1: whereas Regency, the first company to bring transistor radios to market,
Speaker 1: we're actually purchasing their transistors from Texas Instruments. They weren't
Speaker 1: making the transistors themselves, they were buying it from another
Speaker 1: company and then using it in their products. So that
Speaker 1: was one source of pride for the BUCA. His company
Speaker 1: was actually making both the transistors and the radio, which
Speaker 1: in him his mind, meant it was superior. In Abuka
Speaker 1: realized that Americans had trouble pronouncing Totsuko or Tokyo sushin Kogyo,
Speaker 1: which was the full name, and so he met with
Speaker 1: his team and started to say discuss alternate names for
Speaker 1: the company, or at least for a brand. At that time,
Speaker 1: they wanted to be able to market their products under
Speaker 1: a brand name that people would be able to say,
Speaker 1: and not just in the United States but all around
Speaker 1: the world. So they tried to find a word that
Speaker 1: would be easy to pronounce in any dialect. And the
Speaker 1: word that they created really was sony. And according to
Speaker 1: pretty much every record I can find, Sony got its
Speaker 1: inspiration from two things. One was the Latin words sonas,
Speaker 1: from which the words sound and sonic originate, and the
Speaker 1: other was the name Sonny, for the nickname Sonny, which
Speaker 1: you would tend to get of a young person who
Speaker 1: has a lot of pluck, specifically young boys at the time,
Speaker 1: because I mean, this is the nineteen fifties, um, and
Speaker 1: there was just that kind of a philosophy, I guess
Speaker 1: is the way word all used to be kind. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: sonny and sonas were the the inspiration, and so they
Speaker 1: came up with the name Sony for the brand name. Now,
Speaker 1: the company still stayed as Tatsuko for the time being,
Speaker 1: but the brand they would use on their products was Sony.
Speaker 1: Around that same time, Tatsuko also began to manufacture transistors
Speaker 1: for other Japanese companies, and this was a big deal
Speaker 1: because again Tatsuka was a much smaller company than some
Speaker 1: of these other ones, so it almost seemed like it
Speaker 1: was boastful for a little company to make transistors for
Speaker 1: other Japanese companies. They also needed to expand their operations
Speaker 1: in order to meet demand, and that meant hiring on
Speaker 1: more employees. So what was their strategy. How would they
Speaker 1: get more people to help create transistors. Well, their strategy
Speaker 1: was to hire what they started to call transistor girls. Now,
Speaker 1: these were young ladies who were seeking employment to help
Speaker 1: their families. Many of them were opting to go into
Speaker 1: the workforce rather than attend senior high school, so they
Speaker 1: would go to high school, but instead of going to
Speaker 1: senior high school, they would essentially drop out of school
Speaker 1: and then go into the workforce to help their families out.
Speaker 1: And they mainly came from outlying areas in Japan, more
Speaker 1: rural areas in Japan. So Tatsuko ended up purchasing and
Speaker 1: renovating a building not far from the factory for the
Speaker 1: young ladies to live in. It was a dormitory, and
Speaker 1: this is something that was not uncommon in Japan at
Speaker 1: the time. To build dormitories for employees. Uh So, it
Speaker 1: almost sounds like a lot of these companies had almost
Speaker 1: a collegiate atmosphere. You had your workplace and then you
Speaker 1: had your dormitory and you just pretty much stayed there.
Speaker 1: Um in the history about the company, there's actually an
Speaker 1: amusing story about this first dormitory. One of the executives
Speaker 1: from Sony was put in charge of escorting the ladies
Speaker 1: to their new dorm but got the message that the
Speaker 1: dorm wasn't quite ready yet, so he needed to stall
Speaker 1: for time. So instead he got all the ladies onto
Speaker 1: a bus and they took a bus tour of Tokyo.
Speaker 1: And apparently the young ladies thought the tour was really exciting.
Speaker 1: Most of them came from areas well outside of Tokyo,
Speaker 1: so to them the city was just exciting and interesting.
Speaker 1: But the executive the entire time was apparently freaking out
Speaker 1: that there was not going to be any place where
Speaker 1: the stay once the tour was overly it all worked out.
Speaker 1: Employment at that time in Japan was a regulated process,
Speaker 1: and again we're getting into this idea of the government
Speaker 1: really being hands on with the way companies behave. Typically
Speaker 1: companies in Tokyo could not hire on people all by themselves.
Speaker 1: They couldn't do it just go out there and put
Speaker 1: out a notice and hire people and interview them. Instead,
Speaker 1: all potential hires and all requests had to go through
Speaker 1: a governmental ministry. But because Tatsuko recruited from areas outside Tokyo,
Speaker 1: the company could take on more of this responsibility. Now
Speaker 1: that wasn't because these outlying areas had a different law
Speaker 1: to cover it. They were still under the same law.
Speaker 1: But the issue was that in those rural regions. Rather
Speaker 1: in those rural regions, they just lacked the resources to
Speaker 1: to follow the official procedure. You didn't have necessarily representatives
Speaker 1: of the government out in all of these outlying regions,
Speaker 1: so there literally was no way to follow the rules
Speaker 1: if you were recruiting from out there. And that was
Speaker 1: a little convenient. And by the way, Tatsuka was not
Speaker 1: like the only company to do this, and they weren't
Speaker 1: trying to be sneaky or anything. They just they had
Speaker 1: a real need for it to hire more people, and
Speaker 1: uh going through the official government chain would have slowed
Speaker 1: things down considerably. In nineteen fifty seven, Totsuka would introduce
Speaker 1: the t R sixty three, a k a. The pocketable radio. Now,
Speaker 1: the word pocketable didn't exist before n It was coined
Speaker 1: by Toutsuko upon the launch of the product. And here's
Speaker 1: some interesting trivia. Fifty of the t R sixty three
Speaker 1: radios were being sold as the first off the line,
Speaker 1: So you could get the first ever TR sixty three radio.
Speaker 1: But don't worry if you didn't buy it, you had
Speaker 1: forty nine more chances to buy the first one. It's
Speaker 1: kind of like something being very unique. You can't be
Speaker 1: very unique. You're either unique or you're not. You're either
Speaker 1: the first or you aren't the first. But in in
Speaker 1: Tatsuko's history there were fifty one of the t R
Speaker 1: sixty three. The export price of the t R sixty
Speaker 1: three was thirty nine dollars and nine cents, which, if
Speaker 1: you adjusted for inflation according to the calculator I used
Speaker 1: from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, that would be about
Speaker 1: three hundred forty two dollars, So a three forty two
Speaker 1: dollar pocket radio pretty expensive, I would say. In night,
Speaker 1: Tutsuko would officially change its name to the Sony Corporation.
Speaker 1: Now that was not a change that everybody was crazy
Speaker 1: about the company's bank took exception to this move, and
Speaker 1: so did some of the employees of Tatsuko, But ultimately
Speaker 1: the top brass decided the name change was necessar Serry
Speaker 1: to take a top spot in the global electronics market,
Speaker 1: they had to have a name that people could recognize
Speaker 1: and say easily. Moreover, they felt like calling the company
Speaker 1: Sony Corporation would provide for flexibility if the company ever
Speaker 1: decided to branch out beyond electronics, the name wouldn't cause
Speaker 1: brand confusion the way something like Sony Electronic Industries might,
Speaker 1: which turned out to be a really smart decision because,
Speaker 1: as we know today, Sony is in a lot more
Speaker 1: businesses than just the electronics world. They have a presence
Speaker 1: in lots of different places, So it ended up being
Speaker 1: a smart move to go with Sony Corporation rather than
Speaker 1: something more specific like Sony Electronics Industries. Now that brings
Speaker 1: me to the end of this particular episode of episode one.
Speaker 1: I've got so much more to say, but I wanted
Speaker 1: to get at least to the point where Tatsuko changed
Speaker 1: its name to Sony um And remember we're at nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty eight at that point, and the company launched in
Speaker 1: nineteen six, So it's just been a little bit more
Speaker 1: than a decade and that's all we've been able to cover.
Speaker 1: And I haven't really even gotten into a lot of
Speaker 1: their big products yet. So in our next episode, we're
Speaker 1: gonna look at some of the products that got Sony
Speaker 1: recognition around the world, as well as the philosophy and
Speaker 1: some of the weird stories around it, uh and how
Speaker 1: Sony really kind of began to shape itself over the
Speaker 1: next part of its history. So make sure you tune
Speaker 1: in next week to hear part two. And um, I
Speaker 1: don't know when I'll have a good idea of how
Speaker 1: many parts this is going to be. I'm aiming for
Speaker 1: three parts, but based upon how much I've done with
Speaker 1: the first two parts, it may be a four parter
Speaker 1: simply because there's just so much to cover. Even if
Speaker 1: I skip over major product launches, you know, I just
Speaker 1: concentrate on the first of that particular type of product,
Speaker 1: it's still a ton of material, like here's the first
Speaker 1: oh LED television and here's the first three D television.
Speaker 1: After a while, that list gets super long because Sony
Speaker 1: has just developed so many different products. But I will
Speaker 1: do my best to get through as much of it
Speaker 1: as I can without making again, without making this the
Speaker 1: Sony Stuff Show, because I know you guys. You know
Speaker 1: you're very patient, and uh I appreciate that, but I
Speaker 1: don't want to concentrate on one topic forever. If you
Speaker 1: guys have suggestions for topics I should cover in the future,
Speaker 1: maybe there's something that you've always wanted to know about
Speaker 1: in the tech space that I haven't covered, or maybe
Speaker 1: there's something that I have covered in the past but
Speaker 1: I really should do an update to it. Let me know.
Speaker 1: Send me a message. My email is text stuff at
Speaker 1: how stuff Works dot com, or you can contact me
Speaker 1: on Twitter or Facebook. It's tech Stuff hs W at
Speaker 1: both of those and uh I will talk to you
Speaker 1: again really see for more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics. Is that how stuff Works dot com m