Speaker 1: Welcome to Text Up, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and I love all things tech, and today we are
Speaker 1: continuing our journey through the history of Pana Sonic. Now,
Speaker 1: if you haven't listened to the previous episode, I recommend
Speaker 1: you do that first. You'll learn a lot about Konosuke
Speaker 1: Matt Sushida. He is the founder of Pana Sonic, and
Speaker 1: in fact, the company was originally called the Matt Sushida
Speaker 1: Electric Industrial Company, Limited, and we're still in that era
Speaker 1: as I pick up this episode. In fact, the company
Speaker 1: at the end of the last episode had not even
Speaker 1: introduced the Pana Sonic brand name yet. We also learned
Speaker 1: how the company produced military vehicles wooden ones for Japan
Speaker 1: during World War Two, and how the company didn't really
Speaker 1: necessarily have a choice in that. Again, I don't really
Speaker 1: know what the sentiments were for Matt Sushida and his employees,
Speaker 1: but I know that they really didn't have any option
Speaker 1: but to make those military vehicles, and that would end
Speaker 1: up putting the company in danger when the US government
Speaker 1: began to kind of dismantle older Japanese businesses that were
Speaker 1: very um familial. They were all kind of locked into
Speaker 1: these families that had deep relationships with one another and
Speaker 1: with the Japanese government. So this was sort of a
Speaker 1: systemic approach to dismantling all of that. And uh, Matt Sushida,
Speaker 1: despite the fact that it wasn't this ancient family business,
Speaker 1: was one of the companies that was under the microscope
Speaker 1: when that was going on. We're now up to nineteen
Speaker 1: five d four when the company was just starting to
Speaker 1: try and market radios to the United States, and for
Speaker 1: Matt Sushida, this was still the pre transistor radio era.
Speaker 1: There were transistor radios around this time, but Matt Sushida
Speaker 1: was not making them yet, so we're still talking about
Speaker 1: radios that use vacuum tubes for amplifiers. So let's get
Speaker 1: back into this story now. During the nineteen fifties, Japan's
Speaker 1: economy saw some fluctuations. Early it saw on overall improvement,
Speaker 1: but there were some ups and downs along the way.
Speaker 1: The country was still in a post World War Two
Speaker 1: era of reconstruction officially until nineteen fifty two. The economy
Speaker 1: boomed in the early days of the Korean War because
Speaker 1: the forces, like the United Nations, the United States in particular,
Speaker 1: were dependent upon Japan to supply materials that they needed.
Speaker 1: But by nineteen fifty three the economy was starting to
Speaker 1: slow down a little, it picked up again, and despite
Speaker 1: some drops here and there, was on a fairly steady
Speaker 1: climb through most of the nineteen fifties. One consequence of
Speaker 1: this is that a lot of Japanese households were making
Speaker 1: more money, and thus they had more money to spend
Speaker 1: on what had previously been a luxury item like an
Speaker 1: electric appliance. So Matt Ssshida the company saw sales grow,
Speaker 1: at least in Japan. I honestly don't know how their
Speaker 1: sales numbers fared in the United States, because while the
Speaker 1: histories I read talked about the company marketing radios over here,
Speaker 1: I didn't find much information about how the sales were going.
Speaker 1: If the sales were good, the company had managed to
Speaker 1: overcome the odds because Japanese electronics were not yet common
Speaker 1: in the US and most Americans didn't associate japan with
Speaker 1: technology at that point, and for years the general rep
Speaker 1: for Japanese technology was associated with really cheap goods that
Speaker 1: didn't perform as well as stuff that was produced in
Speaker 1: the United States or in Europe. It would take some
Speaker 1: time for that perception to change. It was not helped
Speaker 1: by the fact, and we'll get into it that Japanese
Speaker 1: companies did some fairly shady things in order to really
Speaker 1: get a foothold in the markets of Europe and North America. Now,
Speaker 1: one thing that Matsushida had to do in the American
Speaker 1: market was come up with a new brand name for
Speaker 1: some audio speakers that the company wanted to sell to
Speaker 1: customers in the United States. They had been using the
Speaker 1: National brand in Japan, but that was sort of a
Speaker 1: prestige consumer products that the company was selling in Japan,
Speaker 1: and it had a real issue, which was that there
Speaker 1: were a lot of companies in America that had some
Speaker 1: variation of National as their branding, so it really wasn't
Speaker 1: a possible brand for them to go with. So they
Speaker 1: had to create something new, and they went with something
Speaker 1: that felt related to speak, kers and sound. They came
Speaker 1: up with the name Pana Sonic, and so in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty five, remember this company was founded in nineteen eighteen.
Speaker 1: Nineteen fifty five, we finally get the brand name that
Speaker 1: would ultimately become the name for the entire company again
Speaker 1: more than fifty years later. Spoiler alert, and that's not
Speaker 1: even going to come in this episode. Another spoiler alert,
Speaker 1: and dangan we we nearly got to that brand name
Speaker 1: at the end of the last episode, but just missed it.
Speaker 1: Over in Japan, things were going pretty well in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty five. The company was one of several in Japan
Speaker 1: to enjoy the rebound of the economy as Japanese households
Speaker 1: began to invest in home appliances. The three major ones
Speaker 1: at that time we're all really big ticket items. Television
Speaker 1: was one of them, a refrigerator was another, and a
Speaker 1: washing machine was the third. Those were the three must
Speaker 1: haves if you wanted to have a modern household in Japan.
Speaker 1: Matt Sushida invest did in the manufacturing process, which made
Speaker 1: production more efficient and helped bring down the cost of manufacturing,
Speaker 1: which also meant the company could sell their products at
Speaker 1: a lower price tag sort of, we'll get to it.
Speaker 1: By nineteen fifty five, factories were producing more than five
Speaker 1: thousand units per month, which is a small number compared
Speaker 1: to manufacturing facilities today, but at the time in Japan,
Speaker 1: it was an impressive accomplishment. The Japanese government announced in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty six that the nation had successfully navigated the
Speaker 1: process of economic reconstruction. Now, I believe in the previous
Speaker 1: episode I mentioned that Japan used to be an empire,
Speaker 1: and I really should take this opportunity to say that
Speaker 1: technically it still is. There still is an emperor of Japan.
Speaker 1: It's just that these days the role of emperor is
Speaker 1: almost entirely symbolic, with the actual role of governing falling
Speaker 1: to the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the Japanese government.
Speaker 1: Something else happened in nineteen fifty six that does not
Speaker 1: pop up in Panasonic official history, and that was the
Speaker 1: formation of an organization called the Home Electronic Appliance Market
Speaker 1: Stabilization Council. Now, this council counted the larger consumer electronics
Speaker 1: manufacturing companies among its members, the big Japanese electronics companies.
Speaker 1: This group, which The Washington Post would later label as
Speaker 1: an illegal production cartel, worked together to set minimum price
Speaker 1: levels for certain products like radios and television. They all said,
Speaker 1: none of us are going to price any of our
Speaker 1: models below this certain amount. As price fixing is what
Speaker 1: it was and coercion between companies that are supposed to
Speaker 1: be competitive, and it also acted against foreign companies. They
Speaker 1: worked very hard to lobby the government of Japan to
Speaker 1: put as many obstacles in the way of foreign companies
Speaker 1: that were trying to get imports into Japan and as possible,
Speaker 1: because they didn't want that competition there, So they were
Speaker 1: trying to deny foreign companies access to distribution chains in Japan,
Speaker 1: for example. And when we come back to this a
Speaker 1: little bit later in this episode, we'll see how these
Speaker 1: companies in this council would have a profound impact on
Speaker 1: the electronics market in the United States anyway. Also in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty six, Konosuke held his own meeting within matt Sushida,
Speaker 1: and he laid out an ambitious five year plan. So
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty six, the company posted annual sales of
Speaker 1: twenty two billion yen. Now, if we adjusted that for inflation,
Speaker 1: that would be nearly one thirty five billion yen today.
Speaker 1: I would give those figures in dollars, but then you
Speaker 1: have to consider stuff like the historic exchange rates, and
Speaker 1: it really gets difficult to find resources that include exchange
Speaker 1: rates the date back that far so I can't really
Speaker 1: tell you how much that is in US dollars in
Speaker 1: a meaningful way. Anyway. The start point was twenty two
Speaker 1: billion yen, but Konosuke wanted to have sales climbed to
Speaker 1: eighty billion yon within five years. He also wanted the
Speaker 1: assets for the company to increase from three billionion to
Speaker 1: ten billion yen, and he wanted to grow the company
Speaker 1: by seven thousand employees at the end of those five years.
Speaker 1: So this was a pretty ambitious and aggressive plan, but
Speaker 1: Konosuke argued that it really reflected what the people of
Speaker 1: Japan wanted, and the company restructured. It had grown to
Speaker 1: eleven divisions up to that point, but now they subdivided that,
Speaker 1: so now it was fifteen divisions. Konosuke did this because
Speaker 1: he really believed that each division needed enough autonomy to
Speaker 1: make decisions that would benefit that specific division and not
Speaker 1: get tied up with the fate of the company at large.
Speaker 1: So that way, the consumer electronics division and an industrial
Speaker 1: like business to business vision could each operate independently of
Speaker 1: each other and not have to worry about the success
Speaker 1: or failure of one affecting the other. While the plan
Speaker 1: was ambitious, it turned out that it was also achievable
Speaker 1: because the company would hit all the goals of this
Speaker 1: five year plan in just a little more than four years.
Speaker 1: Jumping back to ninety six just for a second, that's
Speaker 1: also the year that Matt Sushida introduced an electric automatic
Speaker 1: rice cooker. The cooker had a heater inside it that
Speaker 1: used the same general process as the heating coils that
Speaker 1: I talked about in the previous episode with irons, so
Speaker 1: I won't go into it again, but it also had
Speaker 1: a thermostat that could cut off power to the heating
Speaker 1: coils after the cooker had reached a target temperature, which
Speaker 1: meant the cooker wouldn't burn the rice. So how the
Speaker 1: heck do thermostats work? I mean, this is a tech
Speaker 1: stuff episode, right, and you knew I was going to
Speaker 1: have to do this. We'll be looking specifically at electro
Speaker 1: mechanical thermostats. There are more modern thermostats that are purely electronic.
Speaker 1: They have sensors that can measure heat in very precise
Speaker 1: ways and thus send a command for a heating or
Speaker 1: cooling element to stop or start, depending on the situation,
Speaker 1: But older thermostats depended on a different approach. These thermostats
Speaker 1: work because of physics and how metal expands in the
Speaker 1: presence of heat. So why does metal even do that?
Speaker 1: When the metal heats up, the atoms in the metal
Speaker 1: gain more energy and they move around more because atoms
Speaker 1: are always moving, well, nearly always. If a material were
Speaker 1: to cool down to like absolute zero, the atoms would
Speaker 1: essentially freeze in place. There'd be no atomic movement. But
Speaker 1: if you add energy in the form of heat in
Speaker 1: this case, it will cause the atoms to boogie down
Speaker 1: a bit more. They'll move around more than they did before.
Speaker 1: And as they do that, they take up more space
Speaker 1: than they used to, and so the piece of metal
Speaker 1: as a whole expands because those individual atoms and molecules
Speaker 1: are pushing each other apart as they get funky with
Speaker 1: the heat. I can completely identify with that. However, different
Speaker 1: metals don't all do this at the same rate. They
Speaker 1: have different expansion rates. Some metals expand more slowly than others,
Speaker 1: and you can think of these metals as having atoms
Speaker 1: that have a different tolerance to heat. They just aren't
Speaker 1: as impressed as the temperature goes up. If you take
Speaker 1: two different metals that expand at different rates, and then
Speaker 1: you sandwich them together so that you get a strip
Speaker 1: of metal where one side is one metal, the other
Speaker 1: side is the other metal. You have created a bimetallic strip.
Speaker 1: And if you apply heat to this strip, one side
Speaker 1: of the strip will expand faster than the other. So
Speaker 1: one side is expanding quickly, the other one is less quickly,
Speaker 1: and so that means that the expanded side's going to
Speaker 1: start to curl around. As a result, it deforms the
Speaker 1: bimetallic strip. And your typical electro mechanical thermostat has a
Speaker 1: bimetallic strip and that that does this, and as it expands,
Speaker 1: it will displace or tip a component that acts like
Speaker 1: a switch. In old air conditioners. This would tend to
Speaker 1: be a vial of mercury, and the mercury would have
Speaker 1: some wires attached inside the vial that would come into
Speaker 1: contact with the mercury. Depending on the vial's orientation. Liquid
Speaker 1: mercury conducts electricity. That's an important part of this. So
Speaker 1: depending upon the vial's orientation, the heater or the air
Speaker 1: conditioner and the circulation fans would turn on or off.
Speaker 1: So with this rice cooker, the thermostat would trip upon
Speaker 1: reaching a particular temperature and power would stop flowing to
Speaker 1: the heating coils. Matt Sushida wasn't the first company to
Speaker 1: offer an automatic electric rice. The competitor Toshiba had one
Speaker 1: that came out a year earlier, but Matt Sushida's version
Speaker 1: boosted awareness of this technology, and in ninety seven the
Speaker 1: category of automatic rice cookers really began to take off
Speaker 1: in Japan. In nineteen fifty eight, Matt Sushida produced the
Speaker 1: company's first home tape recorder audio tape. This was the
Speaker 1: r Q two A one. This wasn't a cassette tape
Speaker 1: player like the kind that would dominate the nineteen eighties
Speaker 1: when I was a kid. This was a real to
Speaker 1: reel tape recorder. So, hey, guess what. We get to
Speaker 1: talk about how these work really quickly. And this is
Speaker 1: helpful because it also gives you an understanding of how
Speaker 1: magnetic storage works in general, whether it's for audio or
Speaker 1: video or computer data storage or whatever. So let's start
Speaker 1: with the actual tape, and this is the stuff that
Speaker 1: stores information. Basically, it's a strip of plastic material that
Speaker 1: has a ferric ox eye powder bonded to that plastic
Speaker 1: material through some binding agent. Essentially, you can think of
Speaker 1: a binding agent is kind of like glue. Ferric Oxide
Speaker 1: is an oxide of iron. The one most of us
Speaker 1: tend to encounter is iron oxide that's also known as rust,
Speaker 1: but ferric oxide is a little different. Iron oxide is
Speaker 1: made up of one iron atom and one oxygen atom,
Speaker 1: whereas ferric oxide is too iron atoms and three oxygen atoms,
Speaker 1: and that makes all the difference. Really. Ferric Oxide is
Speaker 1: ferro magnetic. That means that if you expose ferric oxide
Speaker 1: to a magnetic field, the field will permanently magnetize that
Speaker 1: ferric oxide. And this is what lets us record information
Speaker 1: to magnetic tape. Using an electro magnet. You can subject
Speaker 1: parts of that tape to a magnetic field as the
Speaker 1: tape passes by, So as the reels are turning, the
Speaker 1: tape is being pulled across underneath an electronic writing head
Speaker 1: that has this electro magnet in it, so it creates
Speaker 1: this magnetic flux generated by that electro magnet, and that
Speaker 1: affects the particles on the tape. It aligns those particles
Speaker 1: in specific ways. So during playback, when the reels are
Speaker 1: rewound and played back across this same electro magnet, the
Speaker 1: head is no longer active, it's in passive mode. But
Speaker 1: the tape's motion creates a magnetic flux that the electro
Speaker 1: magnet picks up and creates a signal out of that.
Speaker 1: So you get a reversible process here. You have one
Speaker 1: signal that you can encode through magnetism, and then use
Speaker 1: that magnetism to regenerate that encoded signal and send it
Speaker 1: back through say an amplifier, to speakers, so you can
Speaker 1: listen to the audio you've recorded. So again, if you
Speaker 1: speak into a micro phone, the microphone converts the kinetic
Speaker 1: energy of your voice that you impart to a little
Speaker 1: diaphragm that's inside the microphone into electrical signals, and those
Speaker 1: signals typically passed through an amplifier to boost their strength
Speaker 1: before they feed into a recorder, which then takes that
Speaker 1: electric signal and generates a magnetic fluctuation that passes on
Speaker 1: to the tape. The tape holds the record of that fluctuation,
Speaker 1: and on playback, the whole process is reversed, except in
Speaker 1: this case, the signal doesn't go back to the microphone.
Speaker 1: It would go say two set of speakers after passing
Speaker 1: through an amplifier. Real to real tape recorders are super cool,
Speaker 1: but they didn't become household systems. They aren't terribly convenient,
Speaker 1: and storing real to real tapes is a pain because
Speaker 1: they take up a good amount of space. The development
Speaker 1: of the cassette tape, which would come a few years later,
Speaker 1: would put the reels inside a little plastic cassette and
Speaker 1: those were much easier to use, and that would change
Speaker 1: things dramatically, but we're a little too early for that
Speaker 1: with the r Q two oh one. I've looked at
Speaker 1: photos of this particular tape recorder and I gotta admit
Speaker 1: I really dig it. It looks kind of like a briefcase.
Speaker 1: It's got a handle on the top of it. You
Speaker 1: did have to plug it into a wall, so it
Speaker 1: was portable, but it wasn't battery operated. The same year
Speaker 1: that Matt sushied To introduced the tape layer, it also
Speaker 1: launched a room air conditioner, one of the earliest small
Speaker 1: air conditioners intended for home use in Japan. There's a
Speaker 1: small unit that could be mounted in a window. The
Speaker 1: company produced eleven hundred of them in the first year
Speaker 1: of production, and I am not going to go through
Speaker 1: how air conditioners work. That's because I already talked about
Speaker 1: how refrigerators work in our last episode, and an air
Speaker 1: conditioner works in pretty much the same way with heat
Speaker 1: exchange coils and fans and then compressor and expansion valve,
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff. So you've been spared that
Speaker 1: whole discussion because we already had it. You're welcome. Now.
Speaker 1: I've got a lot more to say about Matt Sushida
Speaker 1: slash Pana Sonic, but first, let's say a quick break.
Speaker 1: By the late nineteen fifties, Matt Sushida the future Pana
Speaker 1: Sonic was starting to see an increase in international sales,
Speaker 1: though Kona Suke believed that they hadn't really even scratched
Speaker 1: the surface yet. In the fall of nineteen fifty nine,
Speaker 1: the company established its first office in North America, the
Speaker 1: Matt Sushida Electric Corporation of America in New York. By
Speaker 1: this time, the company was producing transistor radios, and again
Speaker 1: it was not the first company to do this. Matt
Speaker 1: Sushida was not necessarily an innovator of technology, but it
Speaker 1: did adopt them pretty quickly in order to produce consumer
Speaker 1: products for the various markets. Engineers at Bell Labs were
Speaker 1: actually the first to develop the transistor all the way
Speaker 1: back in n seven, though the transistor they made was
Speaker 1: far too large to be used in electronics. It was
Speaker 1: more of a of concept. However, it didn't take long
Speaker 1: for companies to start manufacturing smaller transistors and other companies
Speaker 1: to then take those transistors and use them in consumer products.
Speaker 1: So by the late nineteen fifties, Matte Sushida would join
Speaker 1: lots of other electronic companies that we're already producing transistor radios.
Speaker 1: The main purpose of the transistor was to amplify signals,
Speaker 1: something that vacuum tubes had done before. And I've talked
Speaker 1: a lot about how this works, so really we just
Speaker 1: need to think about the general concept. You start off
Speaker 1: with a relatively weak signal that holds the information you want,
Speaker 1: like a radio broadcast, for example. So you've got a
Speaker 1: radio and a radio antenna picks up the broadcast signal.
Speaker 1: The antenna converts that signal into a weak electric signal. Technically,
Speaker 1: the antenna is not converting anything. It's all about physics.
Speaker 1: But anyway, you get the radio broadcast converted into a
Speaker 1: weak electric signal that goes through the antenna to the radio.
Speaker 1: But that signals typically not wrong enough to really drive
Speaker 1: something like speakers effectively, So if you try to listen
Speaker 1: to a radio that didn't have an amplifier in it,
Speaker 1: you would get a very quiet result. So the purpose
Speaker 1: of the transistor is to boost this signal without otherwise
Speaker 1: altering it. So it's all about giving the signal more oomph,
Speaker 1: but not changing it in any other way because that
Speaker 1: would just scramble the output. Vacuum tubes served that purpose
Speaker 1: for decades, but they are large, they're delicate, they're kind
Speaker 1: of like lightbulbs, and they put out a lot of heat,
Speaker 1: so they weren't ideal for portable electronics in general. They
Speaker 1: do still serve a purpose in electronics today, particularly with
Speaker 1: musicians amplifiers. Guitarists swear by amplifiers that are too be
Speaker 1: amplifiers versus transistor amplifiers, and as soon as I get
Speaker 1: my guitar this week, i'll be able to tell you
Speaker 1: my thoughts on it. Kind of The transistor, though, allowed
Speaker 1: for menturization because the transistors themselves were smaller than vacuum tubes,
Speaker 1: and also because they didn't put out as much heat,
Speaker 1: so you could have a small reform factor and not
Speaker 1: worried about it overheating and becoming a problem. Panasonics transistor
Speaker 1: radios would become a success story in the United States,
Speaker 1: driving much of the overseas sales numbers, and it didn't
Speaker 1: hurt that the name pana Sonic applied equally well to
Speaker 1: radios as it did to the speaker systems that came before.
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty, the company developed its first color television set,
Speaker 1: the National K twenty one ten. So since this is national,
Speaker 1: we know that this was for the Japanese market. This
Speaker 1: one had a twenty one inch screen on the diagonal
Speaker 1: and it was a hefty critter. It was inside a cabinet.
Speaker 1: Um it's kind of hard to cover everything that the
Speaker 1: company was doing. And while I'm mostly familiar with the
Speaker 1: consumer electronics side of the company, that was really just
Speaker 1: one to vision of many. This is a company that
Speaker 1: did lots and does lots of stuff. It's just that
Speaker 1: the things that are most visible to to me happen
Speaker 1: to be the consumer electronics. Mattsshida was also in the
Speaker 1: business of producing heavy grade electrical equipment for industrial purposes,
Speaker 1: like stuff like transformers. More than meets the eye, So
Speaker 1: you know, I haven't talked about transformers in a while either.
Speaker 1: This is why I love doing these history episodes. By
Speaker 1: the way, guys, it lets me fit in tons of
Speaker 1: how this tech works, so I sneak in some technical
Speaker 1: education along with historical education. So transformers are a way
Speaker 1: to change the voltage when you're transmitting electricity from one
Speaker 1: place to another as long as that electricity is alternating current,
Speaker 1: meaning that the direction that the current flows and switches
Speaker 1: many times a second. And it's all because of some
Speaker 1: interesting elements of electro magnetism. Now I mentioned electro magnets
Speaker 1: with tape recorders, so this kind of builds on at
Speaker 1: If you run a conductive wire around, say an iron core,
Speaker 1: and then you run a current through that coil of wire,
Speaker 1: you'll create a magnetic field. With direct current, this ends
Speaker 1: up being a steady magnetic field, but if you use
Speaker 1: alternating current, you get a fluctuating magnetic field. The field
Speaker 1: changes as the direction of the current changes. So the
Speaker 1: magnetic field fluctuates as many times a second as the
Speaker 1: current changes direction. Now, one thing that is super cool
Speaker 1: about electro magnets is that if you put one next
Speaker 1: to another one and you run alternating current through the
Speaker 1: first of your two electromagnets, and the second one doesn't
Speaker 1: have anything going through it at all, that fluctuating magnetic
Speaker 1: field from that primary electro magnet will induce current to
Speaker 1: flow through the second electro magnet. So, just as electricity
Speaker 1: flowing through a coil will create a magnetic field, a
Speaker 1: coil in countering a magnetic field will have current flow
Speaker 1: through it. Now, that's true as long as the magnetic
Speaker 1: field is changing in some way. The changing magnetic field
Speaker 1: is necessary if you want the current to keep flowing. Otherwise,
Speaker 1: current will flow as the coil encounters a magnetic field,
Speaker 1: and then it will stop if the magnetic field doesn't
Speaker 1: change at all. So if the coil stops moving if
Speaker 1: the magnetic field is stable, you won't get current to flow.
Speaker 1: Transformers work by pairing two coils together, primary coil and
Speaker 1: a secondary coil, and the ratio of the number of
Speaker 1: loops of each coil between the two. That ratio determines
Speaker 1: how much the voltage will either step up or increase,
Speaker 1: or step down or decrease. If the primary coil has
Speaker 1: more loops than the secondary coil, you've got yourself a
Speaker 1: step down transformer. The voltage that's going out of the
Speaker 1: transformer is going to be lower than the voltage was
Speaker 1: going in. Now that's important. If you're delivering electricity from
Speaker 1: a main transmission line to a building like a house,
Speaker 1: you don't want high voltage going into the house. You
Speaker 1: would have to say danger, danger, high voltage. That's an
Speaker 1: Electric six reference. If you don't know who Electric six is,
Speaker 1: you should definitely listen to that music. Anyway, If the
Speaker 1: secondary coil actually has more loops than the primary coil,
Speaker 1: then you've got yourself a step up transformer. It means
Speaker 1: the outgoing voltage is going to be higher than the
Speaker 1: incoming voltage. This is what you would use to transmit
Speaker 1: electricity across far distances where you need that high voltage
Speaker 1: to push electricity through with as little loss as you
Speaker 1: can manage. This is ultimately why alternating current one out
Speaker 1: over direct current, because transmitting direct current over long distances
Speaker 1: was a challenge in the early days of electricity, and
Speaker 1: typically admit that you really had to build lots more
Speaker 1: power plants to be those to the areas where the
Speaker 1: electricity was going. One other neat thing about transformers is
Speaker 1: that there really aren't any moving parts. Transformer doesn't wear
Speaker 1: down the same way that mechanical systems do over time.
Speaker 1: That being said, things can and do go wrong with transformers,
Speaker 1: and not just Decepticons. If you've ever witnessed this firsthand,
Speaker 1: you know how spectacular it can be to see a
Speaker 1: transformer blow. If the installation around one of the coils
Speaker 1: happens to wear down, or it corrodes, or if the
Speaker 1: transformer is really close to a lightning strike, the transformer
Speaker 1: can heat up and give out a spark. Now, typically
Speaker 1: transformers use mineral oil as a coolant to keep things
Speaker 1: at operational temperature, but mineral oil can burn, and if
Speaker 1: it does, it will create pressure inside the sealed transformer,
Speaker 1: and when that pressure is great enough, it causes the
Speaker 1: transformer to burst been and typically you get a really
Speaker 1: loud bang and a lot of sparks and maybe even
Speaker 1: some flames, and those sparks tend to be kind of
Speaker 1: bluish green there really spectacular, especially when it happens at
Speaker 1: night or whenever the sky is super dark. And I've
Speaker 1: seen this happen a few times, and I'll never forget
Speaker 1: the first time I ever saw it. It was when
Speaker 1: I was a kid. I was in the back seat
Speaker 1: of my parents car, and we were driving through Atlanta,
Speaker 1: and that by itself was outside the norm for us,
Speaker 1: because I grew up in rural Georgia. To us, Atlanta
Speaker 1: was the big, big city. And I remember a transformer
Speaker 1: blew up not too far from our car. It was
Speaker 1: a couple of card links ahead and on the left
Speaker 1: hand side, and at first I thought maybe someone had
Speaker 1: fired off a shotgun or something. I had no idea
Speaker 1: what had happened, and my dad actually explained to me
Speaker 1: what was going on, and I have never forgotten how
Speaker 1: startling that was. Anyway, let's get back to the history
Speaker 1: of Matsushita slash Panasonic. In nineteen sixty one, matt Sushi,
Speaker 1: you began to expand operations by not just opening up
Speaker 1: sales offices in other countries, but also actual manufacturing plants,
Speaker 1: putting the manufacturing closer to where you were going to
Speaker 1: sell the stuff. The first of those was a battery
Speaker 1: production facility called the National Thai Company or in TC.
Speaker 1: That should not be confused with one of many other
Speaker 1: entities that also go by the name in TC. I
Speaker 1: actually got a little confused when I first came across
Speaker 1: this name and had to research it further because it
Speaker 1: was like, is this the NTC I'm thinking of? It
Speaker 1: was not. Names are hard y'all. The company also established
Speaker 1: or helped establish plants in places like Uruguay and Pakistan,
Speaker 1: and by the end of the decade, it would expand
Speaker 1: operations to the Philippines, to Australia, Peru, Mexico, Puerto Rico,
Speaker 1: and several other places. The little company that had started
Speaker 1: off as a workspace in a tiny room that had
Speaker 1: dirt floors was now a global entity. Kanasuke Matsushida had
Speaker 1: accomplished an enormous amount in his run as the founder
Speaker 1: and president of the company, and in nineteen sixty one
Speaker 1: he decided to step down as president, although he would
Speaker 1: remain the chairman of the company for several more years.
Speaker 1: His replacement was his son in law, Masaharu Matsushita, and
Speaker 1: here we go that familial line of succession in companies again.
Speaker 1: During Kanasuke's run, the company didn't just grow dramatically. Kanasuke's
Speaker 1: philosophy stressed the importance of harmony, and he had a
Speaker 1: reputation for really listening to his employees, and he led
Speaker 1: the way in attempting to adopt fair business practices at
Speaker 1: least in Japan in public, we'll get more into that.
Speaker 1: His company was the first one in Japan to adopt
Speaker 1: the five day work week. This was announced like by
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty, it took until nineteen to actually roll out,
Speaker 1: and that was something that other countries have been adopting
Speaker 1: since the early nineteen hundreds, so Japan was kind of
Speaker 1: trailing behind here. And it's actually a pretty good idea
Speaker 1: to talk a moment about the differences in work culture
Speaker 1: in Japan versus places like the United States. So in Japan,
Speaker 1: the major companies are fierce competitors, not just in the
Speaker 1: market generally when they're not you know, working secretly together,
Speaker 1: but they're also competitive for employees. Companies seek the highest
Speaker 1: performing students to join their ranks. Employment tends to be
Speaker 1: a lifetime gig with those companies, so company loyalty and
Speaker 1: the company reciprocating that loyalty over time is a big
Speaker 1: part of the culture. Starting wages in Japanese companies are
Speaker 1: especially around this time. We're pretty low, and we're often
Speaker 1: tied to seniority, and you would typically stay in the
Speaker 1: same job and just get increases in wages working that
Speaker 1: same job through the course of your career. That is,
Speaker 1: of course, all this is only true if you were
Speaker 1: a full time employee. If you were a part time employee,
Speaker 1: which included most of the women who were working in Japan,
Speaker 1: you would not enjoy the same benefits. You wouldn't get
Speaker 1: those same considerations. On a related note, these days, there
Speaker 1: are a few Japanese companies that are actually experimenting with
Speaker 1: moving to a four day work week in an effort
Speaker 1: to reduce work stress and burnout and to boost productivity.
Speaker 1: The booming economy of the nineteen fifties meant that consumers
Speaker 1: were purchasing more electric appliances than ever before. The Japanese
Speaker 1: household was modernizing, and the company's overseas manufacturing facilities could
Speaker 1: supply Mattsushida goods to other markets as well. But this
Speaker 1: also brought up a new need the development of a
Speaker 1: service department, because sometimes even when we do everything correctly,
Speaker 1: our technology break and many manufacturing companies, Mattsoshida among them,
Speaker 1: introduced service divisions for the purpose of repairs and to
Speaker 1: establish the correct policies and processes for service centers. If
Speaker 1: someone wanted to open up a repair shop for matt
Speaker 1: Sushida products, they could have their business certified through Matt
Speaker 1: Soshida and learned the best ways to tackle common repair issues.
Speaker 1: Mattsshida established the service division in nineteen sixty four, but
Speaker 1: that booming economy of the nineteen fifties had gone into
Speaker 1: a bit of the slump. In the nineteen sixties. Several
Speaker 1: factors came together and hit Matt Sushida hard. One was
Speaker 1: the general economic slump, which started around nineteen sixty one
Speaker 1: and got worse year over year. Another was the volatile
Speaker 1: market for consumer electronics, which makes sense, right. I mean,
Speaker 1: once you buy a big appliance, you aren't likely to
Speaker 1: need another one for a good long while. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know about you, but I don't buy refrigerators
Speaker 1: all that often. So a company might experience rapid expansion
Speaker 1: and growth early on when a country is going through
Speaker 1: the process of modernizing, and then see that growth plateau
Speaker 1: or even decline as you start to get to market saturation.
Speaker 1: You know, more households get up to speed, there are
Speaker 1: fewer households that are in need of those things, and
Speaker 1: that was starting to happen in Japan in the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 1: The company had produced more goods than it could sell,
Speaker 1: so supply was outstripping demand, and the company was hurting.
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty four, the company posted a decline in profits,
Speaker 1: which was the first decline in profits since nineteen fifty,
Speaker 1: and there was concern across the company, with the sales
Speaker 1: departments blaming production, production was blaming sales. Things were coming
Speaker 1: to a head. It was time for Konosuke to step
Speaker 1: up again. We'll learn how he did that in just
Speaker 1: a moment, but let's take another quick break. In nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty four, Matt Sushida held a conference in a Tommy, Japan,
Speaker 1: where the presidents of all the sales companies and divisions
Speaker 1: were to gather together to talk through the problems that
Speaker 1: the company faced. Kona Suke ultimately addressed the group and
Speaker 1: said that the economic recession had played a large part
Speaker 1: in the current company status, but that the company itself
Speaker 1: had also made some bad decisions that exacerbated things, and
Speaker 1: he stressed that all sides had some accountability in this problem,
Speaker 1: and that trying to pen blame on one side or
Speaker 1: the other would just delay any solution. Kanasuke himself came
Speaker 1: out of retirement and temporarily assumed the duties of the
Speaker 1: corporate sales division director in order to overhaul the sales
Speaker 1: and distribution divisions at matt Sushida. Early in nineteen sixty five,
Speaker 1: he presented his plan to reorganize the division and institute
Speaker 1: new policies. The plan did not initially receive universal appeal,
Speaker 1: but over time the division adopted it and the company's
Speaker 1: fortunes began to improve. By nineteen sixty six, the company
Speaker 1: also implemented a new wage structure. Now wages were no
Speaker 1: longer tied to seniority as much, but rather to job classification.
Speaker 1: Konosuke wanted to model Matsushida's operations after what he saw
Speaker 1: when he visited the United States. He wanted them to
Speaker 1: be more like a US company, and his ultimate goal
Speaker 1: was to get wages closer to what people would earn
Speaker 1: in a similar position in the United States, and it
Speaker 1: would take several more years before the company would even
Speaker 1: get close to that goal, but it was improving over time.
Speaker 1: One of the shifts the company made was to create
Speaker 1: a stronger communication channel between sales and production, So Konosuke
Speaker 1: thought that it would be valuable to get the sales
Speaker 1: team input on stuff that the manufacturing side should really
Speaker 1: focus on, and the development side as well. The sales
Speaker 1: team had experience talking with retailers, and the retailers knew
Speaker 1: what customers were looking for. So now that Sushida was
Speaker 1: looking to develop new products not just from their internal
Speaker 1: R and D division, but also by responding to customer desires.
Speaker 1: As a result, the company started developing a whole new
Speaker 1: range of consumer electronics, some of which were on a
Speaker 1: more whimsical side. For example, while researching this show, that
Speaker 1: came across a radio that Panasonic produced in the nineteen
Speaker 1: seventies called the twot A loop. It's t O O
Speaker 1: T dash a dash l O O P. Often classified
Speaker 1: as a novelty radio for good reason. This device kind
Speaker 1: of looks like an oversized bracelet that is slightly offset.
Speaker 1: It has one side that's thicker than the other, and
Speaker 1: that thicker side holds the actual radio and speaker, and
Speaker 1: you aren't supposed to wear it on your wrist. It
Speaker 1: was an a M band radio only, so it only
Speaker 1: had the ability to pick up a M stations, no
Speaker 1: FM signals, and they go for pretty penny these days.
Speaker 1: I just did a casual search and I saw some
Speaker 1: listed online for between a hundred fifty dollars to two
Speaker 1: hundred dollars now. The suggested retail price when they first
Speaker 1: went on the market was a mere fourteen dollars cents. However,
Speaker 1: if we adjust that for inflation, it would be quite
Speaker 1: a bit higher. Based on the inflation calculator that I used,
Speaker 1: fourteen dollars in say n two would be equivalent to
Speaker 1: ninety two dollars twenty cents today. So this radio would
Speaker 1: cost nearly a hundred bucks in today's money. So I
Speaker 1: guess when you take that into consideration, uh, and you
Speaker 1: think of the value they have as collector's items, the
Speaker 1: value has only slightly appreciated when you adjust for inflation. Honestly,
Speaker 1: that am only thing really knocks it in my book.
Speaker 1: Mattsushida began to produce a wide variety of consumer goods
Speaker 1: more in tune with what people wanted, just as the
Speaker 1: Japanese economy also began to recover, which created pretty much
Speaker 1: a perfect situation to pull the company away from the
Speaker 1: chaos that had threatened it just a couple of years earlier.
Speaker 1: The company continued marketing new consumer electronics, including its first
Speaker 1: microwave oven, which was actually a very tall cabinet like
Speaker 1: device like mook to me like. It was about four
Speaker 1: or five feet tall, so it was intended more for
Speaker 1: businesses than homes, so I didn't take up that much
Speaker 1: floor space, but did require a good deal of vertical space.
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty seven, Matte Sushida created a new transistor
Speaker 1: radio cassette recorder for the US called the r Q
Speaker 1: two thirty one. I took a look at this, and
Speaker 1: you know, it looks a lot like a radio cassette
Speaker 1: player that I owned when I was a kid. I
Speaker 1: had one very similar to this. One has a little
Speaker 1: handle at the top, has the telescoping antanna and the
Speaker 1: company's old collaborator, Phillips, had actually invented the compact cassette
Speaker 1: format back in nine teen sixty two. Those cassettes that
Speaker 1: I talked about being such a big thing in the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties, So this was the first of Matt Sushida's
Speaker 1: radio cassette players that followed that format. UH and cassettes
Speaker 1: were much easier to use than realtorial tape, and they
Speaker 1: took up a lot less space. Like I said earlier,
Speaker 1: in ninet, Matt Sushida slash Panasonic would celebrate its fiftieth anniversary.
Speaker 1: The company created some new initiatives, including investing in sales
Speaker 1: and production offices in towns of Japan that had seen
Speaker 1: issues with depopulation. Young people were moving away from these
Speaker 1: towns because they were seeking out opportunities, and most of
Speaker 1: the big companies had offices and factories in places like
Speaker 1: Osaka and Tokyo. So this was Matt Sushida trying to
Speaker 1: take advantage of that workforce, not by tempting them away,
Speaker 1: but by building centers closer to them. The company also
Speaker 1: introduced a technology called pen assert a in a S
Speaker 1: E R T. And when I first came across the
Speaker 1: description of this technology, I was left with more questions
Speaker 1: than answers. So I'm just going to quote the passage
Speaker 1: directly from Panasonic's history so that you guys can can
Speaker 1: hear what I first encountered. Quote. This machine represented the
Speaker 1: start in nineteen sixty nine of automated electronic mounting devices
Speaker 1: and components in Japan, the foundation for the company's business
Speaker 1: in mounting machines. The original random access system was improved
Speaker 1: and became a direct random access system in which taping
Speaker 1: was transferred to the insertion head so that a component
Speaker 1: was inserted without being freed This made for rapid progress
Speaker 1: in the mounting tact time and reliability. The system became
Speaker 1: the leader in the field of mounting machines end quote.
Speaker 1: So I had to look into this further because I
Speaker 1: had no clue what the heck this was talking about
Speaker 1: mounting machines. I mean, that could that could mean so
Speaker 1: many different things. But I'm sure most of you know
Speaker 1: what they meant from the beginning. I'm the dumb one.
Speaker 1: I get it. I totally own that. So what they're
Speaker 1: talking about here are devices that you could program to
Speaker 1: mount components onto circuit boards. So the idea here is
Speaker 1: that you design a circuit board for you know, whatever
Speaker 1: thing you're making, and you program a pen Assert automated
Speaker 1: machine to go through the process of inserting components into
Speaker 1: that circuit board in the proper arrangement and orientation. So
Speaker 1: you feed a bunch of blank circuit boards into this
Speaker 1: machine in a way it goes. And there have been
Speaker 1: many devices in the pen Assert line, some with very
Speaker 1: specific responsibilities. I watched a couple of videos of them
Speaker 1: in action on YouTube, and some of them are pretty alarming.
Speaker 1: They move really fast, and some of them look like
Speaker 1: they could easily take a finger off if you weren't
Speaker 1: being careful around them. In nineteen sixty eight, the Import
Speaker 1: commit of the US Electronics Industries Association filed a complaint
Speaker 1: with the US Treasury Department, and it laid out a
Speaker 1: pretty nasty accusation. It said that there were a collection
Speaker 1: of Japanese companies, Japanese electronics companies that were collectively under
Speaker 1: pricing color televisions for the US market with the intent
Speaker 1: to undermine the US market, specifically to undermine US manufacturers
Speaker 1: of televisions. The Japanese companies were using a complicated process
Speaker 1: that included things like rebates and incentives with retailers in
Speaker 1: the US, essentially turning those retailers into co conspirators. And meanwhile,
Speaker 1: those same manufacturing companies in Japan were selling television's at
Speaker 1: premium prices in Japan, so they were selling the stuff
Speaker 1: for very high prices in Japan and then using that
Speaker 1: money to pay for this effort to under price stuff
Speaker 1: in the US market. And the ensuing and investigation would
Speaker 1: stretch on for years, but it did uncover evidence that
Speaker 1: these allegations were true. Addressing the problem, however, most politically difficult,
Speaker 1: as any move against Japan could mean that Japan and
Speaker 1: maybe some other countries could impose tariffs and other trade
Speaker 1: restrictions against the US. So no real action happened on
Speaker 1: an official level in the United States, but American companies
Speaker 1: that had been making televisions gradually exited the market. They
Speaker 1: could not make a profit because Japanese companies were selling
Speaker 1: TVs at a loss. They were selling them for less
Speaker 1: money than it costs to make them. The story, by
Speaker 1: the way, it gets super interesting, but it's also probably
Speaker 1: better saved for maybe even a different podcast. However, it
Speaker 1: does involve everything from shady trading practices to essentially buying
Speaker 1: former politicians so that they would act as lobbyists and more,
Speaker 1: and all of that stuff typically sticks out as some
Speaker 1: of the really glee side of capitalism, so I think
Speaker 1: that would probably fit on a different show better than mine.
Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy, Matsushida sponsored an exhibit at the Expo
Speaker 1: seventy event in Osaka, Japan. The exhibit had a traditional
Speaker 1: Japanese building, a very traditional structure that inside had a
Speaker 1: tea ceremony, which was an interesting nod to the history
Speaker 1: and heritage and traditions of Japan, especially when it was
Speaker 1: coming from a company that was associated with technology. The
Speaker 1: company also created a time capsule, and a group of
Speaker 1: committees selected more than two thousand objects to put into
Speaker 1: that time capsule. Uh it was intended to be buried
Speaker 1: and opened in five thousand years. It's only been fifty
Speaker 1: years since they buried the capsule, so we've got a
Speaker 1: ways to go before we can learn about the objects
Speaker 1: that the committee's decided were quote especially representative of the
Speaker 1: current culture as of nineteen seventy end. Quote that time
Speaker 1: capsule is buried at Osaka Castle Park. So I really
Speaker 1: would love to see it because I remember the seventies
Speaker 1: and I can only imagine how embarrassing some of those
Speaker 1: items will be. Not At the same time, the company
Speaker 1: was dealing with some unhappy customers in Japan. You know,
Speaker 1: there was this growing dissatisfaction among consumers in Japan. They
Speaker 1: were seeing the gap between the list prices versus the
Speaker 1: actual selling prices of electronics. The list price is the
Speaker 1: price of manufacturer attributes to an item as the suggested
Speaker 1: retail price, but retailers aren't necessarily under any obligation to
Speaker 1: follow that, and a retailer can mark up prices in
Speaker 1: an area where there is little competition. This can be
Speaker 1: really profitable. You limit the number of customers you have
Speaker 1: because you're selling stuff at a premium, but you make
Speaker 1: more on a per sale basis. But customers were getting
Speaker 1: tired of paying for these more cups, and they were
Speaker 1: starting to see how expensive things were being sold for
Speaker 1: versus how much it costs to make them. So at
Speaker 1: one point people in Japan were proposing a boycott of
Speaker 1: color television's, and Panasonic was an industry leader in color
Speaker 1: TV in Japan, they would be adversely affected by this.
Speaker 1: Uh In a way, things were coming home to roost.
Speaker 1: The Japanese public was finally starting to object to those
Speaker 1: high prices they've been paying for goods in Japan. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the US markets were reacting to Japanese companies undercutting prices
Speaker 1: in the market. Matt Sushida attempted to address this in
Speaker 1: numerous ways, including setting up a customer service division kind
Speaker 1: of in an effort to get ahead of issues. But
Speaker 1: more or less they were able to kind of weather
Speaker 1: these storms, even though the concerns were legit. In ninety one,
Speaker 1: Matt Sushida would join the New York Stock Exchange while
Speaker 1: investigations were ongoing and charges were being made. The company
Speaker 1: continued to expand and in market more electronics, and two
Speaker 1: years later, in nineteen seventy three, Konosuke Matsushida would retire
Speaker 1: as chairman. He became more of an informal executive advisor.
Speaker 1: The new chairman of the company was Arataro Takahashi, who
Speaker 1: had worked at the company since nineteen thirty six. He
Speaker 1: would only hold the position of chairman for four years, however,
Speaker 1: so in our next episode we'll learn about his replacement,
Speaker 1: and that wraps up part two of this series. So
Speaker 1: in our next episode, we'll catch up with what's been
Speaker 1: going on at the company, including when it officially changed
Speaker 1: its name in two thousand eight to Pana Sonic, and
Speaker 1: we'll learn about a couple of other scandals that the
Speaker 1: company has weathered since the seventies, because there's some pretty
Speaker 1: hefty ones. But that wraps up this episode. If you
Speaker 1: guys have suggestions for future topics, I should tackle, whether
Speaker 1: it's a company, a specific technology, a trend in tech,
Speaker 1: person in tech, anything like that. Let me know. Send
Speaker 1: me a message at Twitter. The handle is text stuff
Speaker 1: hs W and I'll talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: Text Stuff is an I heart Radio production. For more
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Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.