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 am your host, Jonathan Strickland, and today we're going
Speaker 1: to continue the story of Sony. This is part two
Speaker 1: of a part series. I still don't know how many
Speaker 1: it's gonna be, but I'm hoping for three or four.
Speaker 1: We'll see. Uh. This part of the story gets really interesting,
Speaker 1: you know. We we talked in the last episode about
Speaker 1: the founding of Sony, which originally was called Totsuko, and
Speaker 1: how they had a pretty ambitious but rough start because
Speaker 1: they were trying to get established in a tumultuous time
Speaker 1: in Japan's past, just after World War Two. In this episode,
Speaker 1: we're looking at how things picked up from about nineteen forward,
Speaker 1: so let pick up from there. Ninety eight, Sony got
Speaker 1: an interesting start to the year. The company had shipped
Speaker 1: thousands of radios to the United States. Now, at that time,
Speaker 1: Sony didn't have a presence in the US, like there
Speaker 1: was no Sony Corporation of America at that time, so
Speaker 1: they had to depend upon other companies to end up
Speaker 1: handling US sales of Sony products and distribution as well.
Speaker 1: So they were working primarily with a company called agrod
Speaker 1: A g r o d. To handle U S sales,
Speaker 1: and they were distributing through the Delmonico International Sales network,
Speaker 1: which was primarily based on New York. The radios from
Speaker 1: Sony were in a Delmonico warehouse and on January nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty eight, a group of thieves broken too the Delmonico
Speaker 1: warehouse and stole four thousand Sony radios. And even more
Speaker 1: interesting than that, they didn't touch the other radios that
Speaker 1: were in the warehouse, only the Sony ones. Now, that
Speaker 1: turned out to be great free publicity for Sony because
Speaker 1: the thieves took Sony's radios and left all the others behind.
Speaker 1: So something must be special about the Sony radios. They
Speaker 1: had to be better than the others because those were
Speaker 1: the ones that the thieves specifically targeted. Sony was of
Speaker 1: two minds. The executives were two minds of this. One
Speaker 1: was that, well, shucks, now we have to build replacement
Speaker 1: units for the ones that were stolen because we still
Speaker 1: want to sell things in the US. But also, yea
Speaker 1: free advertising. Everyone is going to want a Sony radio
Speaker 1: because they're good enough to steal a weird thing to
Speaker 1: think about, but it actually did give them uh kind
Speaker 1: of a beneficial view in the marketplace. Now late in
Speaker 1: nine UH Sony would end up introducing a new smaller
Speaker 1: pocket radio. You remember in the last episode they had
Speaker 1: coined the term pocketable radio. Oh, this one was called
Speaker 1: the t R six one zero, very catchy. Almost all
Speaker 1: the models I'll be talking about have a letter and
Speaker 1: number designation UM. Sometimes they would end up getting a
Speaker 1: different name, like a nickname or a common name that
Speaker 1: would be used. But this particular pocket radio would become
Speaker 1: very popular, selling half a million sets globally by nineteen sixty,
Speaker 1: so two years after it launched. This was the product
Speaker 1: that helped make Sony a household name in in a
Speaker 1: lot of different areas around the world. Although the biggest
Speaker 1: successes for the company were still ahead of it, they
Speaker 1: were also making other electronics, such as the C thirty
Speaker 1: seven condenser microphone. It had been trying to break into
Speaker 1: the microphone business for a while because the broadcast company
Speaker 1: n h K. You might have remembered that I talked
Speaker 1: about them in the last episode. Well, in h K
Speaker 1: at that time would only use foreign made microphones. They
Speaker 1: didn't make. They didn't use any Japan made microphones. Because
Speaker 1: most of the microphones coming out of Japan were pretty lousy.
Speaker 1: They were not of very high quality, and so a
Speaker 1: lot of the equipment that the NHK Broadcast Company would
Speaker 1: use came from places like Germany. Now Sony wanted to
Speaker 1: change that. They said, this is a national disgrace that
Speaker 1: our own broadcast company is using foreign technology because the
Speaker 1: stuff that's being made of Japan isn't good enough. We
Speaker 1: are going to change that now. Their first prototype was
Speaker 1: less than a total success. Had had a cellul Lloyd
Speaker 1: diaphragm with silver plating on one side, and it would occasionally,
Speaker 1: you know, catch fire, which is exciting but not something
Speaker 1: you want when you're broadcasting. I mean, your audience might
Speaker 1: find it really invigorating, and so would you, but in
Speaker 1: a totally different way. They knew that they had to
Speaker 1: change that design. So they ended up switching from cellul
Speaker 1: Lloyd to milar, essentially that same material you find in
Speaker 1: those silvery balloons, and they used gold particles deposited on
Speaker 1: the milar and they found that it worked much better.
Speaker 1: The company produced the first C thirty seven microphones shortly
Speaker 1: before television began to become popular in Japan. It had
Speaker 1: a later start in Japan that did in the United States. Now,
Speaker 1: by getting these C thirty seven microphones to broadcasters just
Speaker 1: as TV was taking off, Sony also managed to get
Speaker 1: more advertising because you could see the Sony brand name
Speaker 1: on the microphones on the television screen, so Sony was
Speaker 1: able to get another leg up. It was a very
Speaker 1: savvy move for Sony to make at this time in
Speaker 1: its history. By the way, if you're not familiar with
Speaker 1: the difference between condenser microphones and dynamic microphones, in general,
Speaker 1: a condenser mike can pick up everything in an area. Um,
Speaker 1: these are really popular because they're very simple microphones. They
Speaker 1: tend to be inexpensive if you're getting something like the
Speaker 1: blue microphones, which by the way, I love the blue microphones,
Speaker 1: but they are I think they're all condensers. They might
Speaker 1: have a dynamic microphone as well, but the ones I'm
Speaker 1: familiar with, they're all condenser mics, and tiny little noises
Speaker 1: in your environment will get picked up by those microphones.
Speaker 1: It's great if you're trying to record something in the round,
Speaker 1: if you've got a whole bunch of people and like
Speaker 1: maybe your musicians or you're having a conversation you just
Speaker 1: want to have one microphone, it's great for that, but
Speaker 1: if you are a single person talking into it like
Speaker 1: a podcaster and you just want to have a direct
Speaker 1: relationship with the listeners on the other side, I always
Speaker 1: recommend dynamic mics over condensers. The downside with dynamic mic
Speaker 1: is you have to address the microphone pretty much right
Speaker 1: in front of it. You can't go too far to
Speaker 1: the left or to the right, or back off too much,
Speaker 1: or the sound drops in volume very very quickly. But
Speaker 1: on the flip side of it, it doesn't pick up
Speaker 1: all the other noises that happened to be in the area,
Speaker 1: so you get a cleaner sound as farly, or at
Speaker 1: least you hear more of what the person potentially intends
Speaker 1: you to hear. Still getting back to Sony, at this time,
Speaker 1: very very early late fifties, they started to experiment with
Speaker 1: making video tape recorders. They had already made audio tape recorders,
Speaker 1: and then they started thinking, well, how we apply this
Speaker 1: same approach to making a video tape recorder. Now, they
Speaker 1: were not the first company to do this. Other corporations
Speaker 1: had already started to make video tape recorders. Companies like
Speaker 1: our c A and Ampex were already in the game.
Speaker 1: These video tape recorders were meant for companies like broadcast
Speaker 1: companies or sometimes medical facilities. They weren't meant for consumers.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like they were going to make VCRs. First
Speaker 1: of all, they weren't VCRs because VCR is video cassette recorder.
Speaker 1: This is before cassettes. The tape was literally reels of tape. Ah.
Speaker 1: But Sony really wanted to get into that market, and
Speaker 1: they wanted to be the company to create the first
Speaker 1: VTR produced in Japan. VTR stands for video tape recorder. Now,
Speaker 1: the early models that Sony developed left something to be
Speaker 1: desired and were meant purely for commercial businesses, not home
Speaker 1: use as I mentioned before, but still this became one
Speaker 1: of Sony's early products. By the end of nineteen Sony
Speaker 1: was listed in the first section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
Speaker 1: Now this one marked a really big leap for the company.
Speaker 1: They had already been on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, but
Speaker 1: in a different section and the over the counter market
Speaker 1: of the stock exchange. The Tokyo Stock Exchange was divided
Speaker 1: up into different sections, and so the first section was
Speaker 1: much more prestigious and uh it also included a lot
Speaker 1: more of the larger, older Japanese companies. So now Sony's
Speaker 1: kind of like the little guy muscling in on the
Speaker 1: big guy's territory. Ah, and the folks over at Sony
Speaker 1: were beside themselves. They're very happy about this because it
Speaker 1: showed that their hard work was paying off. Now, a
Speaker 1: Sony employee named Leo Asaki would invent a new solid
Speaker 1: state component, the tunnel diode, also known as the Asaki diode. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to dive too far into the technology
Speaker 1: here because I don't want to get buried in it,
Speaker 1: but you do need to know exactly, you know, kind
Speaker 1: of what a diode does in at least in general.
Speaker 1: So basically, a diode directs electricity traffic. It's kind of
Speaker 1: like a one way street. It allows current to flow
Speaker 1: in one direction and prevents it from flowing in the
Speaker 1: reverse direction. That's the ideal. Now, in reality, that's not
Speaker 1: exactly how it works because at least with some diodes,
Speaker 1: like if you get the voltage up high enough, you
Speaker 1: can reverse current across the diode. Uh, but it's not
Speaker 1: generally designed to do that. That's not the purpose typically um,
Speaker 1: but you know, basically that's the idea is that's a
Speaker 1: one way street. The Asaki diode is a semiconductor that
Speaker 1: can work really well at very high frequencies. Now this
Speaker 1: is apart from other other types of solid state UH components.
Speaker 1: At the time. A lot of them worked fine, but
Speaker 1: not at high frequencies. If you're just creating a transistor radio,
Speaker 1: low frequencies might be fine. But let's say you want
Speaker 1: to get into something else, like creating transistorized television or
Speaker 1: a microwave oven, you need to have transistors that can
Speaker 1: work at higher frequencies. So this ended up being a
Speaker 1: huge development and Sony Sony began to look into using
Speaker 1: the diode to make those more complex electronics. And abuca's
Speaker 1: goal was to build the world's first transistor based television set.
Speaker 1: By the end of the year the company had done it.
Speaker 1: They created a prototype of the TV eight DASH three
Speaker 1: oh one that was the first non projection type transistorized television,
Speaker 1: and they launched it in May nineteen sixty. Now, the
Speaker 1: transistors took up much less space than vacuum tubes, which
Speaker 1: meant you could create a much smaller television technically, this
Speaker 1: TV was a portable TV, and it even had a
Speaker 1: handle on the top of the casing which was made
Speaker 1: out of metal. Uh so you could get this, you know,
Speaker 1: just grab it by the top and poured it around.
Speaker 1: It's a little hefty, weighed about twelve pounds. I measured
Speaker 1: eight by seven by nine inches, and it cost about
Speaker 1: as much as conventional televisions did, and of course those
Speaker 1: were bigger and not meant to move around, and had
Speaker 1: vacuum tube technology rather than transistors. In fact, the television
Speaker 1: market in Japan was pretty small, and even globally it
Speaker 1: wasn't that big. Televisions were still considered a luxury item
Speaker 1: in a lot of places. And on top of all
Speaker 1: of that, the TV eight three oh one wasn't terribly
Speaker 1: reliable when it first came out. They frequently broke down.
Speaker 1: They in fact, got a nickname. They started to be
Speaker 1: called Sony's frail little Baby's not terribly complimentary. In nineteen sixty,
Speaker 1: Akio Morita would make the decision to open a branch
Speaker 1: of Sony in the United States. This would become the
Speaker 1: Sony Corporation of America, and the reason for opening up
Speaker 1: a branch in the US was that Sony was earning
Speaker 1: about half of its revenue at that time from the
Speaker 1: overseas market, so of its revenue was coming from Japan
Speaker 1: and the other was from everywhere else. If they were
Speaker 1: able to move manufacturing and marketing overseas, they could end
Speaker 1: up making even more money, They could save in costs,
Speaker 1: and they could respond faster to the market. It just
Speaker 1: made good business sense. So Sony became the first Japanese
Speaker 1: company to enter the American market this way, conducting business
Speaker 1: like an American corporation but operated by a Japanese company. Also,
Speaker 1: at that time, Sony was growing tired of selling and
Speaker 1: distributing Sony products through other American companies. You know, I
Speaker 1: mentioned those previous slee with Agrod being the company that
Speaker 1: was handling sales and Delmonico handling distribution. Sony was getting
Speaker 1: tired of that. They would prefer to be able to
Speaker 1: handle that themselves, especially since some of those companies were
Speaker 1: resisting Sony's push to get the products in stores across
Speaker 1: the United States. Delmonico in particular. Delmonico was saying, well,
Speaker 1: our market is in New York and it would take
Speaker 1: a lot more effort for us to get this stuff
Speaker 1: across the entire US and Sony. Sony's aspirations were to
Speaker 1: have those products really hit the US hard, but in
Speaker 1: order to do that, they needed to take over that
Speaker 1: distribution part. So creating a base of operations within the
Speaker 1: U S would allow them to do that. Uh, after
Speaker 1: that Delmonico problem, they decided that they wanted to get
Speaker 1: out of that contract, and that was gonna be a
Speaker 1: hard sell, right, Delmonico had this exclusive contract with Sony,
Speaker 1: so how do you get out of it? Sony was
Speaker 1: actually able to get out of it because Delmonico violated
Speaker 1: the contract agreement. Delmonico had an agreement to distribute the
Speaker 1: radios that Sony created, but not the TVs. But Delmonico
Speaker 1: said they would end up distributing the TV eight three
Speaker 1: oh one in the United States. They said it without
Speaker 1: Sony giving their approval, and that was when Akio Marita said,
Speaker 1: all right, that's enough, We're not going to deal with that.
Speaker 1: We're gonna cut ties with Delmonico and we're going to
Speaker 1: start doing this ourselves. Now. It wasn't as simple as
Speaker 1: opening up a shop in Japan. Any company wishing to
Speaker 1: open a business in another country first had to secure
Speaker 1: the approval from the Ministry of Finance in Japan, but
Speaker 1: the company was able to obtain permission from the Japanese
Speaker 1: government and open the Sony Corporation of America on February
Speaker 1: fift nineteen sixty. Their base of operations was a warehouse
Speaker 1: on five one four Broadway. That's where they stored their
Speaker 1: products that had formerly been in Delmonico's buildings. There's actually
Speaker 1: a store about how several Sony executives on one cold
Speaker 1: night in nineteen sixty rented eight trucks loaded up all
Speaker 1: of the electronics in Delmonico's warehouse that belonged to Sony,
Speaker 1: and then shoot them across to five fourteen Broadway to
Speaker 1: put them in the new warehouse, which tells you a
Speaker 1: lot about the dedication of the executives if they're going
Speaker 1: to take part in that kind of activity. Later in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties, Sony hit the one million transistors produced per
Speaker 1: month milestone, which is incredible because again, they were still
Speaker 1: considered a small company, one of those things that a
Speaker 1: lot of companies just expected Sony would die off. They
Speaker 1: didn't think that there was going to be any staying
Speaker 1: power because they didn't have the history or the size
Speaker 1: of the larger, more established companies in Japan, but it
Speaker 1: had come a long way from being that first Japanese
Speaker 1: manufacturer of transistors. And to meet demands, Sony executives decided
Speaker 1: they needed to build a new factory. Has happened pretty
Speaker 1: frequently throughout Sony's history. Uh, they would build factories in
Speaker 1: different parts of Japan. They realized that Tokyo wasn't really
Speaker 1: a good option because the city had so little available space,
Speaker 1: and what space there was was going for a very
Speaker 1: very high price, very high demand. So they started looking
Speaker 1: outside of Tokyo and they found a spot forty six
Speaker 1: kilometers outside the city, uh near Atsugi, Japan, and they
Speaker 1: were able to get rights to a hundred sixty five
Speaker 1: thousand square meters of space. Now, the amount they paid
Speaker 1: for that hundred sixty five thousand square meters of space
Speaker 1: would have only got them about ten thousand square meters
Speaker 1: in Tokyo. That's how much more expensive it was inside
Speaker 1: the city versus on the country. You know, it's more
Speaker 1: than a factor of ten, which was kind of incredible. Uh.
Speaker 1: That space went not just to a factory, but also
Speaker 1: to male and female dormitory. So again you had the
Speaker 1: employees living on the campus where they are working, very
Speaker 1: different kind of world than most of America. They also
Speaker 1: faced another challenge. At Suhi was a place still is
Speaker 1: a place that would occasionally get dust storms, particularly in
Speaker 1: the winter. So transistors and circuit boards in general, solid
Speaker 1: state electronics, they are not good friends with dust. Dust
Speaker 1: is a bad component to have mixed up with your electronics.
Speaker 1: So it became a challenge to find ways to create
Speaker 1: a dust free environment for the production of transistors. In
Speaker 1: August nine, Sony would build a research lab called the
Speaker 1: Sony Research Center. The company put Michio Hatoyama in charge
Speaker 1: of the lab. Leo Asaki meanwhile quit Sony to go
Speaker 1: and work for IBM. Uh and and Asaki had actually
Speaker 1: gone to hata Yama and said, hey, uh, so he
Speaker 1: wants to put you in charge of the lab. They're
Speaker 1: gonna come to you and ask you to be in charge.
Speaker 1: You should totally do it. And so Hato Yama at
Speaker 1: first thought, well, that's impossible, why would Sony want me
Speaker 1: to be in charge of the research center. But they
Speaker 1: did ask him and he said okay. And then he
Speaker 1: sees that quits Sony and goes to work for IBM,
Speaker 1: and then he jokingly Hato Yama jokingly said he had
Speaker 1: been duped by Asaki because Zasaki probably would have been
Speaker 1: the head of the lab had he stayed at Sony
Speaker 1: instead have moved to IBM. There didn't seem to be
Speaker 1: any bad blood from what I could tell. It was
Speaker 1: just one of those things where Hatoyama said, you know,
Speaker 1: if it weren't for the fact that Asaki was leaving,
Speaker 1: I never would have gotten this job. Perhaps the biggest
Speaker 1: news around this same time was that the Japanese government
Speaker 1: gave Sony permission to issue a d R stock. Now,
Speaker 1: a d R stands for American depositary receipt and it's
Speaker 1: a type of Japanese stock that can be sold in
Speaker 1: the American securities market typically. And I'm not gonna get
Speaker 1: into too much detail, because honestly, I don't understand it.
Speaker 1: When you get down to a certain level, finances to
Speaker 1: me are a type of dark magic that I probably
Speaker 1: should not look into, or else my eyes will burn
Speaker 1: out of my head or something. But here's how it works.
Speaker 1: At a basic level. You have an American bank, and
Speaker 1: the American bank would issue a d R stocks against
Speaker 1: Sony stocks deposited in the American bank itself, so the
Speaker 1: American bank would be in charge of handling all the
Speaker 1: complicated issues that otherwise would cause problems for the company
Speaker 1: back in Japan. That includes things like exchange rates, shipping
Speaker 1: actual physical stocks to stockholders, that kind of thing, stuff
Speaker 1: that is legitimately difficult to do if you're operating an
Speaker 1: overseas company, especially in the era before everything goes digital,
Speaker 1: when everything is still hard copies. Making sure you can
Speaker 1: get the physical copies of the stock to the customer
Speaker 1: and not have someone else steal it or have it
Speaker 1: get law. It was a big deal. So this actually
Speaker 1: allowed Sony to do some business in the United States
Speaker 1: stock market, but not directly issuing stock. The Sony E
Speaker 1: d R s hit the New York Stock Exchange in
Speaker 1: June ninette. When it opened, they were valued at seventeen
Speaker 1: dollars and fifty cents per share, but it would end
Speaker 1: up going up quite a bit throughout that day. They
Speaker 1: actually sold out of the shares in about an hour,
Speaker 1: and they had two million shares available when it went
Speaker 1: on sale, so people were really excited to get a
Speaker 1: chance to invest in Sony at that time. Here in
Speaker 1: the United States, one also saw Sony launched the first
Speaker 1: all transistor amp tape recorder from Japan. That was the
Speaker 1: TC seven seven seven, also known as the three seven,
Speaker 1: and Sony also launched the s V two oh one,
Speaker 1: which was the world's first transistor based video tape recorder.
Speaker 1: The VTR so it's transistor base, which meant that it
Speaker 1: was smaller like a fifth the size of your traditional
Speaker 1: VTR uh still too big for consumers, way too big
Speaker 1: for consumers um and to build the VTR, Sony actually
Speaker 1: ended up working with Ampex, which was one of the
Speaker 1: companies that was known in that space already at the time.
Speaker 1: Sony shared its expertise and transistors, and Ampex shared its
Speaker 1: expertise in VTR technology. Now, the s V two oh
Speaker 1: one could record video and do slow motion playback, and
Speaker 1: it could also capture still shots, but it also weighed
Speaker 1: more than four hundred pounds and it only had two
Speaker 1: tape heads, which unfortunately meant that no one really had
Speaker 1: a good use for the s V two o one.
Speaker 1: It wasn't versatile enough for broadcast companies, which often had
Speaker 1: VTRs that had multiple tape heads, and it was too
Speaker 1: big and clunky for a consumer and too expensive, so
Speaker 1: you really didn't have a market for this particular piece
Speaker 1: of technology, but the company didn't give up. They did
Speaker 1: decide that was important to develop a strategy that would
Speaker 1: be focusing just on industrial uses and another strategy that
Speaker 1: would focus just on consumer uses rather than try and
Speaker 1: walk a middle line and down between the two, because
Speaker 1: if you walk the middle line, you get squished, just
Speaker 1: like grape, as Mr Miyagi would say. The company also
Speaker 1: took another shot at developing an even smaller portable television,
Speaker 1: this one with a five inch screen, and in order
Speaker 1: to do that, they had to find various ways to
Speaker 1: manaturize all the different components to fit them into a
Speaker 1: small form factor that included a cathode, ray tube and
Speaker 1: the TV electron gun, as well as finding ways to
Speaker 1: fix the problems that the older television set had, primarily
Speaker 1: those temperature tolerances I was talking about. Those old sets
Speaker 1: had synchronization issues. If you expose them to heat, then
Speaker 1: the audio and video signals wouldn't match up anymore, so
Speaker 1: everything would be it would look like a really badly
Speaker 1: dubbed movie all the time. And since the uh TV
Speaker 1: eight three oh one went on sale in May, it
Speaker 1: wasn't long before those problems began to pop up because
Speaker 1: the again technology was developed in the colder months. It
Speaker 1: goes on sale in in late spring, and then the
Speaker 1: summer rolls around, and that's where you end up seeing
Speaker 1: all these issues. In response to this, Sony actually ended
Speaker 1: up building a test chamber in its uh Ins factory
Speaker 1: and subjected new designs to high heat and humidity. Actually,
Speaker 1: I guess technically this was in the research center. So
Speaker 1: they have this chamber and they would increase humidity by
Speaker 1: boiling water inside the chamber. That would end up creating
Speaker 1: steam and raise the humidity. They used electric heaters to
Speaker 1: increase the temperature, and then they started to develop the
Speaker 1: components for the new TV, and the new components worked
Speaker 1: much better in high heat and humidity, but then they
Speaker 1: found out that lower temperatures caused similar problems, so they
Speaker 1: were back to the drawing board. They also tested the
Speaker 1: television's performance when subjected to vibrations, and the way they
Speaker 1: did this was they have one of these old portable TVs.
Speaker 1: They put in a car and they turned the television
Speaker 1: on and they'd have people driving up and down the highway,
Speaker 1: sometimes quite quickly, and in fact researchers were pulled over
Speaker 1: for speeding at one point, and the cat was nearly
Speaker 1: out of the bag. Sony had kept this tiny five
Speaker 1: inch screen television quiet, but now the police had pulled
Speaker 1: over employees with one of these televisions. But fortunately that
Speaker 1: did not end up spoiling the secret. Two people who
Speaker 1: got to see it before anyone else did outside of Sony,
Speaker 1: We're pretty important. They were the Emperor and Empress of Japan.
Speaker 1: They came to visit Sony's HQ and they were allowed
Speaker 1: to go into a uh quiet room and see this
Speaker 1: five inch screen and they were told, please don't tell
Speaker 1: anyone about it, and they kept the trap shut. Once
Speaker 1: it was ready, the TV had the designation of the
Speaker 1: TV five Dash three oh three, but it was better
Speaker 1: known as the micro TV, and it would go on
Speaker 1: sale in nine Now over in New York, Sony opened
Speaker 1: up a showroom on October one, nineteen sixty two, and
Speaker 1: it was a real chaotic mass leading up to that
Speaker 1: opening because they discovered that construction policies in the United
Speaker 1: States are different than they are in Japan. They did
Speaker 1: not expect to run into the problem of having to
Speaker 1: hire various contractors for all the different types of systems
Speaker 1: within a building. You know, they would usually end up
Speaker 1: hiring one construction company in Japan, and then that construction
Speaker 1: company would be responsible for getting all of the various
Speaker 1: systems installed, even if that meant working with subcontractors. In
Speaker 1: the United States, Sony had to do all that hiring itself,
Speaker 1: so they had different people there to work on electricity,
Speaker 1: on plumbing, as well as construction, and everyone was trying
Speaker 1: to work in the same space at the same time
Speaker 1: at different rates of work, and it was chaos. There
Speaker 1: was also a language barrier that made things even more difficult, obviously,
Speaker 1: but Sony managed to hold a popular but somewhat crazy
Speaker 1: opening on October one, nineteen sixty two. When the micro
Speaker 1: TV went on sale on October four, it sold out
Speaker 1: almost immediately. And there's actually a cute story about this
Speaker 1: portable television before it ever went on sale in the
Speaker 1: United States. So Frank Sinatra, if you don't know who
Speaker 1: Frank Sinatra has asked your parents, was in Japan and
Speaker 1: he visited Sony's headquarters and he got a chance to
Speaker 1: see the micro TV because at that time it was
Speaker 1: already being sold in Japan, so it was no longer
Speaker 1: a secret in Japan, but it wasn't on sale in
Speaker 1: the United States yet. So he sees this little television,
Speaker 1: he asks, could I take one of those back with
Speaker 1: me because this thing is amazing. But the Japanese engineers
Speaker 1: explained the channel settings in the United States and in
Speaker 1: Japan are different, so you wouldn't be able to tune
Speaker 1: into channels back in the US. You would be on
Speaker 1: the wrong frequency, so you wouldn't be able to get
Speaker 1: the the feed that you would want. But Akio Marita
Speaker 1: promised Frank Sinatra he would send one of these sets
Speaker 1: to Sinatra as soon as the American versions were produced.
Speaker 1: So then October four, Sony begins to sell these micro
Speaker 1: TVs in the United States, and on October five, Marita
Speaker 1: would go to Paramount Pictures in California personally and deliver
Speaker 1: a micro TV to Sinatra as promised. I think that's
Speaker 1: pretty awesome. I've got a similar story about a computer game,
Speaker 1: but it's not quite as impressive. It wasn't delivered to
Speaker 1: me by hand. The micro TV actually really put Sony
Speaker 1: on the map. The transistor radio had done a lot,
Speaker 1: but the micro TV was the first product that everyone,
Speaker 1: even if they didn't have plans to buy one. They
Speaker 1: wanted one because it was just such an interesting, cool product,
Speaker 1: a tiny television you could take with you. It was
Speaker 1: the first truly successful product that the Sony Corporation of
Speaker 1: America I got to handle. The tape recorder, which was
Speaker 1: also successful, was still managed by another American company that
Speaker 1: was with Agrod. I think so while the tape recorder
Speaker 1: was a success in America, Sony Corporation of America didn't
Speaker 1: have anything to do with it because that that's still
Speaker 1: was dependent upon a prior relationship with a a an
Speaker 1: agent here in the US. The micro TV was the
Speaker 1: first successful product that the Sony Corporation of America got
Speaker 1: to handle all in its own. Also in nineteen sixty two,
Speaker 1: Sony marketed its second transistor based VTR. You remember that
Speaker 1: first one was four hundred pounds and nobody wanted it.
Speaker 1: This second one was called the p v DASH one hundred,
Speaker 1: and it was again meant for industrial and academic use,
Speaker 1: not home use. It was considered to be portable, though
Speaker 1: it's still pretty hefty v VTR. It wasn't like easy
Speaker 1: to move around, but it was considered to be more
Speaker 1: portable than your typical VTR, and its price was two
Speaker 1: point four eight million yen, which was pretty expensive. One
Speaker 1: of the first big customers of this particular type of
Speaker 1: video tape recorder, however, were airlines, specifically American Airlines and
Speaker 1: Pan American airlines. At the time, they wanted these VTRs
Speaker 1: to replace film systems for in flight films because films,
Speaker 1: they you know, when you're actually using film, it has
Speaker 1: a tendency to break over time and get damaged. The
Speaker 1: film quality can degrade. Video was a little bit more robust,
Speaker 1: although the early implementations of Sony VTRs meant that uh,
Speaker 1: it wasn't like a cassette. It was still real to reel,
Speaker 1: so it's still easy to cause damage to the stuff.
Speaker 1: And often while they had projected that these reels would
Speaker 1: last for forty viewings, the reality was more like one,
Speaker 1: so a little bit short of the mark. But that
Speaker 1: was largely because of the way people were loading the
Speaker 1: video into systems. It wasn't that the product was faulty,
Speaker 1: it was that it was hard to use without causing
Speaker 1: damage to the tape if you weren't being careful. And
Speaker 1: often if you're or flight attendant, I mean, you've got
Speaker 1: so many things you have to worry about, and most
Speaker 1: of them are way more important than the in flight
Speaker 1: entertainment system. Um So asking people to set aside extra
Speaker 1: time to very carefully manage the entertainment system was not
Speaker 1: a high priority for a lot of flight attendants and
Speaker 1: thus it ended up having some issues. Meanwhile, back over
Speaker 1: in the Sony research department, Sony engineers were busy developing
Speaker 1: an electronic calculator. Now, like other Sony products, they were
Speaker 1: using a trial and error approach. They found that the
Speaker 1: Esaki diodes, which were so great in the transistorized television,
Speaker 1: were not suitable for calculators. They had to develop an alternative,
Speaker 1: and in the summer of nineteen two they developed a
Speaker 1: prototype calculator and it was actually an electric typewriter connected
Speaker 1: to a calculator. You would feed your equation or whatever,
Speaker 1: your different figures into the calculator and it would actually
Speaker 1: print the results on paper. So it'd used the electronic
Speaker 1: typewriter to or electric typewriter, I should say, to print
Speaker 1: the results. They would do some more prototypes after that,
Speaker 1: and eventually Sony executives, who at first were really reluctant
Speaker 1: to even invest the resources into making a calculator they
Speaker 1: didn't see the value in it initially. They changed their
Speaker 1: minds after they started seeing the prototypes that were coming
Speaker 1: out of this research, and the A team rededicated itself
Speaker 1: to building a working consumer model, and in Sony would
Speaker 1: show off the m D five calculator at the New
Speaker 1: York World's Fair and it was a big hit. The
Speaker 1: calculator could handle numbers up to eight digits in length,
Speaker 1: which was a big deal at that time, and they
Speaker 1: could also do multiplication, which was something earlier calculators could
Speaker 1: not do. They could do addition and subtraction, but not multiplication.
Speaker 1: In fact, if you wanted to do a multiplication problem,
Speaker 1: you really just had to do an addition problem over
Speaker 1: and over and over again to find the answer. O Now,
Speaker 1: the M and m D five stood for Minerva, the
Speaker 1: Goddess of wisdom, and it was followed by the m
Speaker 1: D six, which improved upon its predecessor by adding a
Speaker 1: decimal point. Following models improved the forearm factor so it
Speaker 1: got smaller over time, and they also added more functionality,
Speaker 1: and Sony managed to establish itself as a player in
Speaker 1: the calculator and eventually computer space. Around that same time,
Speaker 1: Sony was debuting the nineteen inch chroma Tron color TV
Speaker 1: that was in September nineteen sixty four. It became the
Speaker 1: fifth Sony product n sixty four, and we're only talking
Speaker 1: about the fifth Sony product. The other four would include
Speaker 1: the tape recorder, the transistor radio, the transistor TV, and
Speaker 1: the video tape recorder. However, that chromotron wasn't perfect out
Speaker 1: of the gate, like many Sony products that had some
Speaker 1: bugs in it. Um early Sony products, I should say
Speaker 1: sometime mine flaws made mass production impractical of the Chromotron,
Speaker 1: so the team had to go back and try and
Speaker 1: figure out how to engineer around those and uh so
Speaker 1: it while it had been unveiled, it wasn't hitting the
Speaker 1: market yet. They needed to fix these problems so that
Speaker 1: mass production would become possible, thus allowing for producing enough
Speaker 1: sets to meet demand and also not have the price
Speaker 1: be astronomical. The actual set based on the Chromotron wouldn't
Speaker 1: go into mass production until night and by then they
Speaker 1: renamed it the Triny tron Um. Also around that time,
Speaker 1: the company announced that it was developing a videotape recorder
Speaker 1: for home use. This one was called the CV DASH
Speaker 1: two thousand. It weighed fifteen kilograms, which is about thirty
Speaker 1: three pounds, and according to Sony's history, it wasn't that
Speaker 1: much heavier than the average tape recorder, So that tells
Speaker 1: you how heavy these electronics were at the time. Thirty
Speaker 1: three pounds is pretty hefty. Uh. This was a real
Speaker 1: to real machine, so it was not again, not a
Speaker 1: a set. It was real to real um and it
Speaker 1: would take some time before home consumers would start to
Speaker 1: adopt the CV two thousand. Usually, just like some of
Speaker 1: the other technologies, you first saw it an industrial use hospitals, factories, schools,
Speaker 1: and then eventually making its way into consumer homes. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it was able to reproduce black and white images,
Speaker 1: not color. In Sony lands a contract with IBM to
Speaker 1: develop magnetic tape for computer data storage and use. Now
Speaker 1: this seems like it's nothing, but it was huge news.
Speaker 1: Enormous news that IBM, which had previously been using three
Speaker 1: M as its provider for magnetic tape, would turn to Sony,
Speaker 1: a foreign company that just a few years previous had
Speaker 1: been so small that most companies didn't even consider it
Speaker 1: a competitor. IBM was a much larger company with a
Speaker 1: much longer history. This was a huge deal. In fact,
Speaker 1: Thomas Watson himself, the chairman of IBM, traveled to Japan
Speaker 1: and visited Sony's office in Tokyo to meet with executives.
Speaker 1: This is the guy the Watson computer is named after. Now.
Speaker 1: The following year, the two companies partnered to build a
Speaker 1: production facility for magnetic tapes in the United States, which
Speaker 1: of course meant that Sony first had to get approval
Speaker 1: from Japanese government, because that was still a thing at
Speaker 1: the time. Now, at this time, both the US and
Speaker 1: Japan were in economic recessions. It was a tough time
Speaker 1: all over the place. Sony stock price had dropped, as
Speaker 1: did a lot of other companies. It wasn't that Sony
Speaker 1: had done something wrong, It's that this economic depression was
Speaker 1: affecting lots of people, and now of desperation, Sony sent
Speaker 1: a representative to IBM to see if the company would
Speaker 1: be interested in investing in Sony by purchasing some stock,
Speaker 1: and IBM actually jumped at the chance to do it,
Speaker 1: and Sony ended up making three hundred million yen in
Speaker 1: the trans action, which alone was enough to keep the
Speaker 1: company going and to start kind of an avalanche effect
Speaker 1: where more and more companies began to invest in the
Speaker 1: Japanese economy and it really turned things around for Japan.
Speaker 1: So Sony's move kind of was the initial event that
Speaker 1: caused a greater investment into Japanese corporations and really turned
Speaker 1: things around. It was pretty impressive. In nineteen sixty seven,
Speaker 1: Sony would launch the I C C Dash five hundred
Speaker 1: so backs S O B A X. It was an
Speaker 1: electronic desktop calculator. It's kind of a predecessor to a
Speaker 1: personal computer, and so backs, by the way stood for
Speaker 1: solid Abicus Sexy. In nineteen sixty eight, Sony would enter
Speaker 1: a fifty fifty venture with CBS Incorporated to create CBS
Speaker 1: Slash Sony Records Incorporated. This particular entity changed names and
Speaker 1: brand branding several times. In nineteen seventy three, it became
Speaker 1: the CBS owned Sony Incorporated. In three became CBS Slash
Speaker 1: Sony Group Incorporated. And then eventually Sony would purchase the
Speaker 1: company and make it a wholly owned subsidiary. In nineteen
Speaker 1: seven and in they renamed it Sony Music Entertainment Incorporated.
Speaker 1: And here's where history gets really super complicated. I mentioned
Speaker 1: this at the beginning of the first episode of this
Speaker 1: We're not just talking about Sony anymore. Sony had merged
Speaker 1: with this or created division, and then that division merged
Speaker 1: with an existing entity, and that existing entity actually was
Speaker 1: older than Sony, wash the CBS Incorporated entity. And I'm
Speaker 1: specifically talking about their music, not not CBS, not the
Speaker 1: television company, but the music branch of the company. It
Speaker 1: had been around since nineteen twenty nine. Back then it
Speaker 1: was called the American Record Corporation, and then it became
Speaker 1: the Columbia Recording Corporation in nineteen thirty eight. CBS bought
Speaker 1: it in nineteen sixty six. Nineteen sixty eight, Sony creates
Speaker 1: this division and merges it with the CBS division. And
Speaker 1: so it's funny because Sony traces history to but this
Speaker 1: particular branch that now is a wholly owned subsidiary under
Speaker 1: Sony dates back to nineteen twenty nine. And I could
Speaker 1: do a full episode just on Sony Music as well
Speaker 1: as the other big entertainment divisions in Sony, and maybe
Speaker 1: someday I will. But instead of going into the full
Speaker 1: history of Sony Music, which would extend this series out
Speaker 1: like by three episodes or something, and I don't want
Speaker 1: to do that to you, guys. Here's some highlights instead. First,
Speaker 1: Sony Music became one of the only few major players
Speaker 1: in music publishing. If you've ever looked into the music
Speaker 1: publishing world, you realize that when it comes to big labels,
Speaker 1: there are only a few of them, and that is
Speaker 1: not always great. Right. If you've only got a few
Speaker 1: big companies, then you have the potential for shenanigans. And
Speaker 1: in fact, that did happen. In the nineties, music companies,
Speaker 1: including Sony were accused of price fixing music CDs. I'm
Speaker 1: sure some of you remember c d s. Anyway, Eventually,
Speaker 1: these companies were fined more than sixty million dollars in
Speaker 1: a settlement, although as part of that settlement they did
Speaker 1: not admit to any wrongdoing. They also had to distribute
Speaker 1: something like seventy million dollars worth of CDs to various
Speaker 1: public and nonprofit organizations. So that was not a great
Speaker 1: mark for any of those music companies, including Sony. And
Speaker 1: another controversy that included Sony Music happened when it back
Speaker 1: when it was Sony b MG. And that's another complicated
Speaker 1: story that I'm not going to go into here again.
Speaker 1: If I if you guys want, I will do uh
Speaker 1: episodes about Sony music to tell you more. But here's
Speaker 1: what I think is important, and it really plays into
Speaker 1: the tech stuff space. In two thousand five, people found
Speaker 1: out that the copy protects and on some Sony B
Speaker 1: M G c d s was atrocious. Not only was
Speaker 1: it uh invasive, it actually caused real problems. Uh See,
Speaker 1: if you were to put one of these CDs into
Speaker 1: a computer, it would copy over DRM software onto your computer,
Speaker 1: which would change your computer's operating system. Now, the reason
Speaker 1: for this was to attempt to block any any way
Speaker 1: of copying the c D. They wanted to prevent piracy.
Speaker 1: But the software was not easy to uninstall. It would
Speaker 1: install itself on a computer and you couldn't easily take
Speaker 1: it off. And it created a security vulnerability, which meant
Speaker 1: that hackers could get remote access to a person's computer
Speaker 1: through that vulnerability. So, in other words, Sony's actions punished
Speaker 1: legal customers people who actually bought the CD by making
Speaker 1: their computers vulnerable to remote hacks, which is not a
Speaker 1: good thing. This is also one of those classic arguments
Speaker 1: that people point to and say a lot of DRM
Speaker 1: digital rights management strategies end up hurting the legal customer
Speaker 1: and ignores the actual problem of piracy. In fact, what
Speaker 1: it does is it encourages people to go through the
Speaker 1: route of getting a pirated copy because typically your priorateed
Speaker 1: copies have all of this protection stripped away from it,
Speaker 1: so it won't affect you in a negative way. Uh.
Speaker 1: This is one of those stories that people point to
Speaker 1: and say, this is what I'm talking about. Well, by
Speaker 1: two thousand seven, Sony had changed its tune on this
Speaker 1: DRM and pade a massive amount of money in a
Speaker 1: series of legal settlements and recalled some but not all,
Speaker 1: of the CDs. Anyway, the important thing to remember is this, Uh,
Speaker 1: when Sony began to branch out beyond developing electronics and
Speaker 1: got into the publication business, that was a big deal.
Speaker 1: Like they were no longer just an electronics company. This
Speaker 1: goes back to that strategy they had when they first
Speaker 1: named the company Sony. They decided to call it Sony
Speaker 1: Corporation and not Sony elect Toronic Industries or something like that,
Speaker 1: specifically because they knew this would be a possibility that
Speaker 1: they would branch out into other markets besides electronics. Now
Speaker 1: let's get back to the technology and to nine. So
Speaker 1: that same year Sony opened up Sony United Kingdom in
Speaker 1: the UK, where you'd expect it to be. And since
Speaker 1: the development of the CV two thousand reel to reel
Speaker 1: video tape recorder, Sony had begun to work on creating
Speaker 1: a video cassette recorder, which was a pretty tough challenge,
Speaker 1: but they identified the potential of a huge market for it.
Speaker 1: Because see, real to real tape is tricky, and you
Speaker 1: have to take the film from one reel it's wound
Speaker 1: up on the reel. You have to take the end
Speaker 1: of that film feed through the head of the video
Speaker 1: tape recorder out the other side, and then you have
Speaker 1: to thread it onto the the second reel. And then
Speaker 1: when you operate the device, it means that the reels
Speaker 1: turn in such a way so that, uh, the tape
Speaker 1: is pulled by the an initially empty reel and it
Speaker 1: unwinds on the other one while it winds on what
Speaker 1: used to be the empty one. Right, So you've got
Speaker 1: this whole thing and you just connect the two onto
Speaker 1: the device. But it means that you know, handling that film,
Speaker 1: you decrease the lifetime of it. You you increase the
Speaker 1: chance that you're going to damage the film. H cassette's
Speaker 1: had a real big advantage. All of that stuff would
Speaker 1: be contained within a cassette, and then that means it
Speaker 1: would be protected from your grubby hands or from dust. Um,
Speaker 1: it would remain viable longer. But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: you would have to figure out, well, how do you
Speaker 1: make it work. What's the mechanism that gets the tape
Speaker 1: to feed through the head of the VCR. How do
Speaker 1: you get this thing that's contained within a plastic cassette
Speaker 1: so that it goes through the part of your player
Speaker 1: that can actually read the material that's been magnetically stored
Speaker 1: on the tape. And it took several years of work
Speaker 1: to get a working product type. When they did get
Speaker 1: a working prototype, they called it the you Matic VTR.
Speaker 1: That was purely an in house prototype, just a proof
Speaker 1: of concept. Uh and Abuka when he saw it, said,
Speaker 1: this is great. Just think how fantastic the next one
Speaker 1: is gonna be. And he wanted the video cassettes to
Speaker 1: get down to the size of about a paperback book,
Speaker 1: which was much smaller than the version that they had
Speaker 1: for the prototype. By nineteen seventy three, the group was
Speaker 1: working that was working on the VCR spun off from
Speaker 1: the development division it had been part of, and it
Speaker 1: officially became known as the Beta Max, R and D Group.
Speaker 1: Sony's first Beta Max VCR with debut on May tenth,
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy, and the company offered two models. There was
Speaker 1: one that was a standalone VCR. That one was called
Speaker 1: the s L six hundred, and there was also a
Speaker 1: TV VCR combo. It was called the LV eighten No. One.
Speaker 1: So if you think those television player combos are a
Speaker 1: relatively new thing, no, they date all the way back
Speaker 1: to the seventies. In nine teen seventy six, Sony would
Speaker 1: turn thirty years old, and that was also the year
Speaker 1: that Massa ru Ibuka would step down as the chairman
Speaker 1: of Sony. He stayed on as an advisor for the
Speaker 1: rest of his life, but he was no longer in
Speaker 1: a leadership position. But that's also the year that JVC
Speaker 1: announced that the VHS format for the VCR was going
Speaker 1: to come out and the VCR wars began. Now. To
Speaker 1: learn more about Beta Max, VHS and VCRs, you can
Speaker 1: check out the classic tech Stuff episode tech Stuff Sets
Speaker 1: Its VCR, which published way back on March twelve, two
Speaker 1: thousand twelve. Basically, Beta Max and VHS entered into a
Speaker 1: massive format war, and you had two sides. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like Braveheart with the Scots and the English. So
Speaker 1: you had Sony and Tashiba and Sanio Electric and any NYC,
Speaker 1: Iowa and Pioneer on one side, and then on the
Speaker 1: VHS side you had j vc U, Matt, Sushita, Hatachi,
Speaker 1: Mitsubishi Electric, Sharp and a Ki Electric were all on
Speaker 1: that side. And then they went to fight, and Beta
Speaker 1: Max had certain advantages over the VHS format, but in
Speaker 1: the end, VHS one out for one thing, VHS VHS
Speaker 1: sets initially needed fewer components to build, which meant it
Speaker 1: was more attractive for the manufacturing process, so VHS would
Speaker 1: eventually become the standard, and Beta max essentially faded into history.
Speaker 1: I mean that was still being used in the production
Speaker 1: side of things, but not on the consumer electronics side.
Speaker 1: Now that's not to say that Beta max was a dud.
Speaker 1: It actually did pretty well. Sony did some pretty good
Speaker 1: business leading up to its eventual decline, but by the
Speaker 1: early nineteen eighties the writing was kind of on the wall,
Speaker 1: and by Sony began to make VHS sets, which was
Speaker 1: kind of the the admission that Beta max was no
Speaker 1: longer going to be a powerhouse. The fact that they
Speaker 1: were going to start making the peating technology was a
Speaker 1: pretty tough pill to swallow. You know. You had these
Speaker 1: people at Sony who took great pride in the fact
Speaker 1: that they developed the Beta max format, but eventually they
Speaker 1: had to admit that it wasn't going to win out
Speaker 1: over VHS v H. Beta Max would stick around a
Speaker 1: little bit longer, but really it was. It was almost
Speaker 1: unheard of by anyway. Well, that concludes this episode of
Speaker 1: the Sony story. There's still a ton to talk about.
Speaker 1: There's some stuff that happened during the VCR wars that
Speaker 1: I want to cover in our next episode, plus obviously
Speaker 1: continue the story and try and get as close to
Speaker 1: modern day as I possibly can. Uh, there are a
Speaker 1: lot of things that are complicated that I need to
Speaker 1: talk about, including Sony Pictures. That is another company that
Speaker 1: predates the Sony Corporation itself if you look at the
Speaker 1: core of that company. Um, so we have some more
Speaker 1: to talk about. Uh. If you guys have suggestions for
Speaker 1: future topics, maybe you want me to talk about Sony
Speaker 1: Music maybe you want me to do a full episode
Speaker 1: about Sony Pictures. I'll go into a little bit to
Speaker 1: tail next episode, but again I won't go into a
Speaker 1: full episode on it. But if you want to hear
Speaker 1: more about that kind of stuff or any other topic,
Speaker 1: let me know. Send me a message. The email is
Speaker 1: tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com, or drop
Speaker 1: me a line on Facebook or Twitter. The handle at
Speaker 1: both of those is tech Stuff hs W. And if
Speaker 1: you haven't friended me yet or followed me, what more
Speaker 1: do I gotta do? Man, I'm working my butt off here.
Speaker 1: Come on, it's just me so lonely, so very lonely. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I'll talk to you guys next week, and I hope
Speaker 1: you have a great one. Um let's talk again really
Speaker 1: soon for more on this and thousands of other topics.
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