WEBVTT - Panasonic - 1954 to 1973 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:07.800 Welcome to Text Up, a production from I Heart Radio. 0:00:12.200 --> 0:00:15.120 Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, 0:00:15.320 --> 0:00:18.920 Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio 0:00:19.120 --> 0:00:22.960 and I love all things tech, and today we are 0:00:23.079 --> 0:00:27.640 continuing our journey through the history of Pana Sonic. Now, 0:00:27.680 --> 0:00:31.800 if you haven't listened to the previous episode, I recommend 0:00:31.800 --> 0:00:35.680 you do that first. You'll learn a lot about Konosuke 0:00:35.920 --> 0:00:40.320 Matt Sushida. He is the founder of Pana Sonic, and 0:00:40.360 --> 0:00:43.720 in fact, the company was originally called the Matt Sushida 0:00:43.880 --> 0:00:48.720 Electric Industrial Company, Limited, and we're still in that era 0:00:48.880 --> 0:00:52.200 as I pick up this episode. In fact, the company 0:00:52.680 --> 0:00:55.240 at the end of the last episode had not even 0:00:55.360 --> 0:00:59.880 introduced the Pana Sonic brand name yet. We also learned 0:00:59.880 --> 0:01:04.760 how the company produced military vehicles wooden ones for Japan 0:01:05.160 --> 0:01:08.319 during World War Two, and how the company didn't really 0:01:08.520 --> 0:01:12.720 necessarily have a choice in that. Again, I don't really 0:01:12.760 --> 0:01:18.680 know what the sentiments were for Matt Sushida and his employees, 0:01:18.720 --> 0:01:20.919 but I know that they really didn't have any option 0:01:21.000 --> 0:01:24.800 but to make those military vehicles, and that would end 0:01:24.920 --> 0:01:27.920 up putting the company in danger when the US government 0:01:27.959 --> 0:01:31.800 began to kind of dismantle older Japanese businesses that were 0:01:31.920 --> 0:01:36.640 very um familial. They were all kind of locked into 0:01:36.680 --> 0:01:40.040 these families that had deep relationships with one another and 0:01:40.080 --> 0:01:43.399 with the Japanese government. So this was sort of a 0:01:43.440 --> 0:01:49.240 systemic approach to dismantling all of that. And uh, Matt Sushida, 0:01:49.480 --> 0:01:52.600 despite the fact that it wasn't this ancient family business, 0:01:53.360 --> 0:01:56.240 was one of the companies that was under the microscope 0:01:56.360 --> 0:01:59.560 when that was going on. We're now up to nineteen 0:01:59.680 --> 0:02:03.080 five d four when the company was just starting to 0:02:03.200 --> 0:02:07.520 try and market radios to the United States, and for 0:02:07.840 --> 0:02:11.720 Matt Sushida, this was still the pre transistor radio era. 0:02:12.000 --> 0:02:15.959 There were transistor radios around this time, but Matt Sushida 0:02:16.080 --> 0:02:18.519 was not making them yet, so we're still talking about 0:02:18.600 --> 0:02:21.919 radios that use vacuum tubes for amplifiers. So let's get 0:02:22.040 --> 0:02:26.960 back into this story now. During the nineteen fifties, Japan's 0:02:27.000 --> 0:02:32.639 economy saw some fluctuations. Early it saw on overall improvement, 0:02:32.840 --> 0:02:35.240 but there were some ups and downs along the way. 0:02:35.480 --> 0:02:38.040 The country was still in a post World War Two 0:02:38.120 --> 0:02:43.160 era of reconstruction officially until nineteen fifty two. The economy 0:02:43.560 --> 0:02:46.960 boomed in the early days of the Korean War because 0:02:47.440 --> 0:02:50.679 the forces, like the United Nations, the United States in particular, 0:02:50.720 --> 0:02:54.560 were dependent upon Japan to supply materials that they needed. 0:02:55.160 --> 0:02:58.600 But by nineteen fifty three the economy was starting to 0:02:58.600 --> 0:03:02.280 slow down a little, it picked up again, and despite 0:03:02.320 --> 0:03:04.960 some drops here and there, was on a fairly steady 0:03:05.080 --> 0:03:08.640 climb through most of the nineteen fifties. One consequence of 0:03:08.680 --> 0:03:11.720 this is that a lot of Japanese households were making 0:03:11.760 --> 0:03:14.880 more money, and thus they had more money to spend 0:03:14.919 --> 0:03:18.280 on what had previously been a luxury item like an 0:03:18.280 --> 0:03:24.360 electric appliance. So Matt Ssshida the company saw sales grow, 0:03:24.600 --> 0:03:28.200 at least in Japan. I honestly don't know how their 0:03:28.200 --> 0:03:32.200 sales numbers fared in the United States, because while the 0:03:32.320 --> 0:03:36.839 histories I read talked about the company marketing radios over here, 0:03:37.320 --> 0:03:41.160 I didn't find much information about how the sales were going. 0:03:41.600 --> 0:03:44.440 If the sales were good, the company had managed to 0:03:44.480 --> 0:03:48.480 overcome the odds because Japanese electronics were not yet common 0:03:48.480 --> 0:03:51.960 in the US and most Americans didn't associate japan with 0:03:52.040 --> 0:03:56.720 technology at that point, and for years the general rep 0:03:57.040 --> 0:04:00.640 for Japanese technology was associated with really cheap goods that 0:04:00.680 --> 0:04:03.360 didn't perform as well as stuff that was produced in 0:04:03.400 --> 0:04:06.360 the United States or in Europe. It would take some 0:04:06.440 --> 0:04:08.920 time for that perception to change. It was not helped 0:04:08.960 --> 0:04:11.880 by the fact, and we'll get into it that Japanese 0:04:11.960 --> 0:04:16.200 companies did some fairly shady things in order to really 0:04:16.640 --> 0:04:21.240 get a foothold in the markets of Europe and North America. Now, 0:04:21.279 --> 0:04:24.200 one thing that Matsushida had to do in the American 0:04:24.240 --> 0:04:27.159 market was come up with a new brand name for 0:04:27.279 --> 0:04:30.800 some audio speakers that the company wanted to sell to 0:04:30.960 --> 0:04:34.040 customers in the United States. They had been using the 0:04:34.160 --> 0:04:38.560 National brand in Japan, but that was sort of a 0:04:38.600 --> 0:04:42.560 prestige consumer products that the company was selling in Japan, 0:04:42.680 --> 0:04:45.440 and it had a real issue, which was that there 0:04:45.480 --> 0:04:48.320 were a lot of companies in America that had some 0:04:48.440 --> 0:04:52.880 variation of National as their branding, so it really wasn't 0:04:52.920 --> 0:04:55.520 a possible brand for them to go with. So they 0:04:55.520 --> 0:04:58.159 had to create something new, and they went with something 0:04:58.160 --> 0:05:02.240 that felt related to speak, kers and sound. They came 0:05:02.320 --> 0:05:06.400 up with the name Pana Sonic, and so in nineteen 0:05:06.480 --> 0:05:10.080 fifty five, remember this company was founded in nineteen eighteen. 0:05:10.520 --> 0:05:13.480 Nineteen fifty five, we finally get the brand name that 0:05:13.560 --> 0:05:17.000 would ultimately become the name for the entire company again 0:05:17.040 --> 0:05:20.440 more than fifty years later. Spoiler alert, and that's not 0:05:20.520 --> 0:05:23.240 even going to come in this episode. Another spoiler alert, 0:05:23.600 --> 0:05:26.440 and dangan we we nearly got to that brand name 0:05:26.520 --> 0:05:28.960 at the end of the last episode, but just missed it. 0:05:29.360 --> 0:05:33.279 Over in Japan, things were going pretty well in nineteen 0:05:33.320 --> 0:05:36.159 fifty five. The company was one of several in Japan 0:05:36.240 --> 0:05:39.880 to enjoy the rebound of the economy as Japanese households 0:05:39.920 --> 0:05:43.520 began to invest in home appliances. The three major ones 0:05:43.600 --> 0:05:48.080 at that time we're all really big ticket items. Television 0:05:48.160 --> 0:05:50.920 was one of them, a refrigerator was another, and a 0:05:51.000 --> 0:05:54.520 washing machine was the third. Those were the three must 0:05:54.640 --> 0:05:58.359 haves if you wanted to have a modern household in Japan. 0:05:58.839 --> 0:06:02.800 Matt Sushida invest did in the manufacturing process, which made 0:06:02.839 --> 0:06:06.880 production more efficient and helped bring down the cost of manufacturing, 0:06:07.200 --> 0:06:09.600 which also meant the company could sell their products at 0:06:09.640 --> 0:06:12.640 a lower price tag sort of, we'll get to it. 0:06:13.000 --> 0:06:16.360 By nineteen fifty five, factories were producing more than five 0:06:16.360 --> 0:06:19.480 thousand units per month, which is a small number compared 0:06:19.520 --> 0:06:23.120 to manufacturing facilities today, but at the time in Japan, 0:06:23.279 --> 0:06:27.440 it was an impressive accomplishment. The Japanese government announced in 0:06:27.560 --> 0:06:30.960 nineteen fifty six that the nation had successfully navigated the 0:06:30.960 --> 0:06:35.200 process of economic reconstruction. Now, I believe in the previous 0:06:35.200 --> 0:06:37.800 episode I mentioned that Japan used to be an empire, 0:06:38.040 --> 0:06:40.320 and I really should take this opportunity to say that 0:06:40.440 --> 0:06:44.719 technically it still is. There still is an emperor of Japan. 0:06:45.279 --> 0:06:47.480 It's just that these days the role of emperor is 0:06:47.520 --> 0:06:52.280 almost entirely symbolic, with the actual role of governing falling 0:06:52.400 --> 0:06:56.560 to the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the Japanese government. 0:06:57.279 --> 0:07:00.240 Something else happened in nineteen fifty six that does not 0:07:00.480 --> 0:07:04.640 pop up in Panasonic official history, and that was the 0:07:04.680 --> 0:07:09.200 formation of an organization called the Home Electronic Appliance Market 0:07:09.279 --> 0:07:16.400 Stabilization Council. Now, this council counted the larger consumer electronics 0:07:16.400 --> 0:07:20.880 manufacturing companies among its members, the big Japanese electronics companies. 0:07:21.560 --> 0:07:25.080 This group, which The Washington Post would later label as 0:07:25.120 --> 0:07:30.160 an illegal production cartel, worked together to set minimum price 0:07:30.240 --> 0:07:34.320 levels for certain products like radios and television. They all said, 0:07:34.680 --> 0:07:37.400 none of us are going to price any of our 0:07:37.440 --> 0:07:41.000 models below this certain amount. As price fixing is what 0:07:41.040 --> 0:07:45.200 it was and coercion between companies that are supposed to 0:07:45.200 --> 0:07:49.680 be competitive, and it also acted against foreign companies. They 0:07:50.000 --> 0:07:53.440 worked very hard to lobby the government of Japan to 0:07:53.920 --> 0:07:57.400 put as many obstacles in the way of foreign companies 0:07:57.400 --> 0:08:00.800 that were trying to get imports into Japan and as possible, 0:08:01.200 --> 0:08:04.200 because they didn't want that competition there, So they were 0:08:04.240 --> 0:08:08.280 trying to deny foreign companies access to distribution chains in Japan, 0:08:08.360 --> 0:08:10.560 for example. And when we come back to this a 0:08:10.600 --> 0:08:13.360 little bit later in this episode, we'll see how these 0:08:13.560 --> 0:08:16.960 companies in this council would have a profound impact on 0:08:17.000 --> 0:08:21.080 the electronics market in the United States anyway. Also in 0:08:21.200 --> 0:08:26.119 nineteen fifty six, Konosuke held his own meeting within matt Sushida, 0:08:26.280 --> 0:08:29.400 and he laid out an ambitious five year plan. So 0:08:29.440 --> 0:08:32.520 in nineteen fifty six, the company posted annual sales of 0:08:32.600 --> 0:08:37.160 twenty two billion yen. Now, if we adjusted that for inflation, 0:08:37.600 --> 0:08:42.160 that would be nearly one thirty five billion yen today. 0:08:42.360 --> 0:08:45.080 I would give those figures in dollars, but then you 0:08:45.160 --> 0:08:48.640 have to consider stuff like the historic exchange rates, and 0:08:48.679 --> 0:08:52.320 it really gets difficult to find resources that include exchange 0:08:52.400 --> 0:08:55.040 rates the date back that far so I can't really 0:08:55.320 --> 0:08:57.520 tell you how much that is in US dollars in 0:08:57.559 --> 0:09:01.200 a meaningful way. Anyway. The start point was twenty two 0:09:01.240 --> 0:09:05.199 billion yen, but Konosuke wanted to have sales climbed to 0:09:05.440 --> 0:09:09.760 eighty billion yon within five years. He also wanted the 0:09:09.800 --> 0:09:13.360 assets for the company to increase from three billionion to 0:09:13.600 --> 0:09:16.840 ten billion yen, and he wanted to grow the company 0:09:16.880 --> 0:09:20.040 by seven thousand employees at the end of those five years. 0:09:20.320 --> 0:09:23.880 So this was a pretty ambitious and aggressive plan, but 0:09:24.000 --> 0:09:27.640 Konosuke argued that it really reflected what the people of 0:09:27.720 --> 0:09:32.560 Japan wanted, and the company restructured. It had grown to 0:09:32.679 --> 0:09:37.040 eleven divisions up to that point, but now they subdivided that, 0:09:37.160 --> 0:09:41.640 so now it was fifteen divisions. Konosuke did this because 0:09:41.640 --> 0:09:45.520 he really believed that each division needed enough autonomy to 0:09:45.640 --> 0:09:49.800 make decisions that would benefit that specific division and not 0:09:49.960 --> 0:09:52.840 get tied up with the fate of the company at large. 0:09:53.400 --> 0:09:58.200 So that way, the consumer electronics division and an industrial 0:09:58.559 --> 0:10:03.160 like business to business vision could each operate independently of 0:10:03.200 --> 0:10:06.480 each other and not have to worry about the success 0:10:06.600 --> 0:10:10.400 or failure of one affecting the other. While the plan 0:10:10.679 --> 0:10:13.400 was ambitious, it turned out that it was also achievable 0:10:13.480 --> 0:10:16.679 because the company would hit all the goals of this 0:10:16.760 --> 0:10:20.280 five year plan in just a little more than four years. 0:10:20.880 --> 0:10:24.120 Jumping back to ninety six just for a second, that's 0:10:24.120 --> 0:10:27.880 also the year that Matt Sushida introduced an electric automatic 0:10:28.080 --> 0:10:30.920 rice cooker. The cooker had a heater inside it that 0:10:31.120 --> 0:10:33.880 used the same general process as the heating coils that 0:10:33.920 --> 0:10:36.200 I talked about in the previous episode with irons, so 0:10:36.240 --> 0:10:38.559 I won't go into it again, but it also had 0:10:38.640 --> 0:10:41.480 a thermostat that could cut off power to the heating 0:10:41.480 --> 0:10:45.400 coils after the cooker had reached a target temperature, which 0:10:45.440 --> 0:10:48.679 meant the cooker wouldn't burn the rice. So how the 0:10:48.720 --> 0:10:51.440 heck do thermostats work? I mean, this is a tech 0:10:51.440 --> 0:10:54.000 stuff episode, right, and you knew I was going to 0:10:54.120 --> 0:10:57.640 have to do this. We'll be looking specifically at electro 0:10:57.720 --> 0:11:03.199 mechanical thermostats. There are more modern thermostats that are purely electronic. 0:11:03.320 --> 0:11:06.200 They have sensors that can measure heat in very precise 0:11:06.240 --> 0:11:09.400 ways and thus send a command for a heating or 0:11:09.400 --> 0:11:12.880 cooling element to stop or start, depending on the situation, 0:11:13.240 --> 0:11:18.600 But older thermostats depended on a different approach. These thermostats 0:11:18.640 --> 0:11:22.320 work because of physics and how metal expands in the 0:11:22.360 --> 0:11:25.360 presence of heat. So why does metal even do that? 0:11:25.720 --> 0:11:28.920 When the metal heats up, the atoms in the metal 0:11:29.120 --> 0:11:32.880 gain more energy and they move around more because atoms 0:11:33.200 --> 0:11:37.160 are always moving, well, nearly always. If a material were 0:11:37.200 --> 0:11:40.960 to cool down to like absolute zero, the atoms would 0:11:41.120 --> 0:11:44.760 essentially freeze in place. There'd be no atomic movement. But 0:11:45.040 --> 0:11:48.000 if you add energy in the form of heat in 0:11:48.040 --> 0:11:51.920 this case, it will cause the atoms to boogie down 0:11:52.160 --> 0:11:55.120 a bit more. They'll move around more than they did before. 0:11:55.160 --> 0:11:57.920 And as they do that, they take up more space 0:11:58.200 --> 0:12:01.600 than they used to, and so the piece of metal 0:12:01.720 --> 0:12:06.040 as a whole expands because those individual atoms and molecules 0:12:06.320 --> 0:12:09.120 are pushing each other apart as they get funky with 0:12:09.280 --> 0:12:15.520 the heat. I can completely identify with that. However, different 0:12:15.679 --> 0:12:19.040 metals don't all do this at the same rate. They 0:12:19.080 --> 0:12:23.440 have different expansion rates. Some metals expand more slowly than others, 0:12:23.840 --> 0:12:25.920 and you can think of these metals as having atoms 0:12:25.920 --> 0:12:29.360 that have a different tolerance to heat. They just aren't 0:12:29.360 --> 0:12:32.800 as impressed as the temperature goes up. If you take 0:12:32.880 --> 0:12:36.480 two different metals that expand at different rates, and then 0:12:36.520 --> 0:12:40.040 you sandwich them together so that you get a strip 0:12:40.040 --> 0:12:43.160 of metal where one side is one metal, the other 0:12:43.200 --> 0:12:47.880 side is the other metal. You have created a bimetallic strip. 0:12:48.240 --> 0:12:51.520 And if you apply heat to this strip, one side 0:12:51.760 --> 0:12:56.040 of the strip will expand faster than the other. So 0:12:56.240 --> 0:12:59.640 one side is expanding quickly, the other one is less quickly, 0:13:00.160 --> 0:13:03.079 and so that means that the expanded side's going to 0:13:03.160 --> 0:13:06.840 start to curl around. As a result, it deforms the 0:13:06.960 --> 0:13:11.880 bimetallic strip. And your typical electro mechanical thermostat has a 0:13:11.920 --> 0:13:16.079 bimetallic strip and that that does this, and as it expands, 0:13:16.200 --> 0:13:19.240 it will displace or tip a component that acts like 0:13:19.280 --> 0:13:22.600 a switch. In old air conditioners. This would tend to 0:13:22.600 --> 0:13:26.280 be a vial of mercury, and the mercury would have 0:13:26.360 --> 0:13:29.600 some wires attached inside the vial that would come into 0:13:29.640 --> 0:13:33.920 contact with the mercury. Depending on the vial's orientation. Liquid 0:13:33.920 --> 0:13:37.320 mercury conducts electricity. That's an important part of this. So 0:13:37.400 --> 0:13:40.800 depending upon the vial's orientation, the heater or the air 0:13:40.840 --> 0:13:45.079 conditioner and the circulation fans would turn on or off. 0:13:45.840 --> 0:13:49.680 So with this rice cooker, the thermostat would trip upon 0:13:49.760 --> 0:13:53.040 reaching a particular temperature and power would stop flowing to 0:13:53.080 --> 0:13:57.520 the heating coils. Matt Sushida wasn't the first company to 0:13:57.640 --> 0:14:02.640 offer an automatic electric rice. The competitor Toshiba had one 0:14:03.000 --> 0:14:07.200 that came out a year earlier, but Matt Sushida's version 0:14:07.320 --> 0:14:11.320 boosted awareness of this technology, and in ninety seven the 0:14:11.480 --> 0:14:15.360 category of automatic rice cookers really began to take off 0:14:15.400 --> 0:14:19.360 in Japan. In nineteen fifty eight, Matt Sushida produced the 0:14:19.360 --> 0:14:23.640 company's first home tape recorder audio tape. This was the 0:14:23.880 --> 0:14:26.800 r Q two A one. This wasn't a cassette tape 0:14:26.840 --> 0:14:29.760 player like the kind that would dominate the nineteen eighties 0:14:29.800 --> 0:14:32.440 when I was a kid. This was a real to 0:14:32.640 --> 0:14:36.680 reel tape recorder. So, hey, guess what. We get to 0:14:36.720 --> 0:14:39.000 talk about how these work really quickly. And this is 0:14:39.040 --> 0:14:41.640 helpful because it also gives you an understanding of how 0:14:41.760 --> 0:14:45.920 magnetic storage works in general, whether it's for audio or 0:14:46.120 --> 0:14:50.200 video or computer data storage or whatever. So let's start 0:14:50.400 --> 0:14:53.960 with the actual tape, and this is the stuff that 0:14:54.160 --> 0:14:58.560 stores information. Basically, it's a strip of plastic material that 0:14:58.640 --> 0:15:03.280 has a ferric ox eye powder bonded to that plastic 0:15:03.320 --> 0:15:07.280 material through some binding agent. Essentially, you can think of 0:15:07.320 --> 0:15:10.720 a binding agent is kind of like glue. Ferric Oxide 0:15:11.080 --> 0:15:13.800 is an oxide of iron. The one most of us 0:15:13.840 --> 0:15:18.240 tend to encounter is iron oxide that's also known as rust, 0:15:18.320 --> 0:15:21.560 but ferric oxide is a little different. Iron oxide is 0:15:21.600 --> 0:15:25.440 made up of one iron atom and one oxygen atom, 0:15:25.920 --> 0:15:31.160 whereas ferric oxide is too iron atoms and three oxygen atoms, 0:15:31.240 --> 0:15:35.680 and that makes all the difference. Really. Ferric Oxide is 0:15:35.760 --> 0:15:39.880 ferro magnetic. That means that if you expose ferric oxide 0:15:40.000 --> 0:15:44.680 to a magnetic field, the field will permanently magnetize that 0:15:44.760 --> 0:15:48.880 ferric oxide. And this is what lets us record information 0:15:49.000 --> 0:15:53.720 to magnetic tape. Using an electro magnet. You can subject 0:15:54.040 --> 0:15:56.640 parts of that tape to a magnetic field as the 0:15:56.680 --> 0:15:59.360 tape passes by, So as the reels are turning, the 0:15:59.400 --> 0:16:05.040 tape is being pulled across underneath an electronic writing head 0:16:05.640 --> 0:16:08.880 that has this electro magnet in it, so it creates 0:16:08.920 --> 0:16:12.640 this magnetic flux generated by that electro magnet, and that 0:16:12.720 --> 0:16:16.560 affects the particles on the tape. It aligns those particles 0:16:16.640 --> 0:16:21.840 in specific ways. So during playback, when the reels are 0:16:21.880 --> 0:16:27.200 rewound and played back across this same electro magnet, the 0:16:27.280 --> 0:16:32.080 head is no longer active, it's in passive mode. But 0:16:32.480 --> 0:16:36.480 the tape's motion creates a magnetic flux that the electro 0:16:36.600 --> 0:16:39.880 magnet picks up and creates a signal out of that. 0:16:39.960 --> 0:16:43.680 So you get a reversible process here. You have one 0:16:43.720 --> 0:16:48.240 signal that you can encode through magnetism, and then use 0:16:48.320 --> 0:16:53.160 that magnetism to regenerate that encoded signal and send it 0:16:53.200 --> 0:16:56.400 back through say an amplifier, to speakers, so you can 0:16:56.440 --> 0:16:59.160 listen to the audio you've recorded. So again, if you 0:16:59.160 --> 0:17:02.320 speak into a micro phone, the microphone converts the kinetic 0:17:02.440 --> 0:17:05.920 energy of your voice that you impart to a little 0:17:05.960 --> 0:17:10.840 diaphragm that's inside the microphone into electrical signals, and those 0:17:10.880 --> 0:17:14.120 signals typically passed through an amplifier to boost their strength 0:17:14.200 --> 0:17:17.199 before they feed into a recorder, which then takes that 0:17:17.240 --> 0:17:21.000 electric signal and generates a magnetic fluctuation that passes on 0:17:21.040 --> 0:17:24.160 to the tape. The tape holds the record of that fluctuation, 0:17:24.400 --> 0:17:27.159 and on playback, the whole process is reversed, except in 0:17:27.200 --> 0:17:30.280 this case, the signal doesn't go back to the microphone. 0:17:30.320 --> 0:17:33.399 It would go say two set of speakers after passing 0:17:33.400 --> 0:17:37.320 through an amplifier. Real to real tape recorders are super cool, 0:17:37.720 --> 0:17:42.720 but they didn't become household systems. They aren't terribly convenient, 0:17:43.119 --> 0:17:45.720 and storing real to real tapes is a pain because 0:17:45.720 --> 0:17:48.280 they take up a good amount of space. The development 0:17:48.280 --> 0:17:50.920 of the cassette tape, which would come a few years later, 0:17:51.480 --> 0:17:55.119 would put the reels inside a little plastic cassette and 0:17:55.160 --> 0:17:57.320 those were much easier to use, and that would change 0:17:57.320 --> 0:18:00.399 things dramatically, but we're a little too early for that 0:18:00.440 --> 0:18:03.280 with the r Q two oh one. I've looked at 0:18:03.280 --> 0:18:05.840 photos of this particular tape recorder and I gotta admit 0:18:05.880 --> 0:18:08.960 I really dig it. It looks kind of like a briefcase. 0:18:09.000 --> 0:18:11.199 It's got a handle on the top of it. You 0:18:11.240 --> 0:18:13.320 did have to plug it into a wall, so it 0:18:13.359 --> 0:18:17.040 was portable, but it wasn't battery operated. The same year 0:18:17.119 --> 0:18:19.760 that Matt sushied To introduced the tape layer, it also 0:18:19.880 --> 0:18:23.520 launched a room air conditioner, one of the earliest small 0:18:23.560 --> 0:18:26.879 air conditioners intended for home use in Japan. There's a 0:18:26.960 --> 0:18:29.520 small unit that could be mounted in a window. The 0:18:29.560 --> 0:18:31.960 company produced eleven hundred of them in the first year 0:18:32.000 --> 0:18:34.800 of production, and I am not going to go through 0:18:34.800 --> 0:18:38.200 how air conditioners work. That's because I already talked about 0:18:38.240 --> 0:18:42.000 how refrigerators work in our last episode, and an air 0:18:42.040 --> 0:18:44.720 conditioner works in pretty much the same way with heat 0:18:44.720 --> 0:18:48.600 exchange coils and fans and then compressor and expansion valve, 0:18:48.640 --> 0:18:50.919 all that kind of stuff. So you've been spared that 0:18:50.960 --> 0:18:55.119 whole discussion because we already had it. You're welcome. Now. 0:18:55.119 --> 0:18:57.879 I've got a lot more to say about Matt Sushida 0:18:58.040 --> 0:19:01.200 slash Pana Sonic, but first, let's say a quick break. 0:19:08.920 --> 0:19:12.320 By the late nineteen fifties, Matt Sushida the future Pana 0:19:12.400 --> 0:19:15.840 Sonic was starting to see an increase in international sales, 0:19:16.280 --> 0:19:19.800 though Kona Suke believed that they hadn't really even scratched 0:19:19.800 --> 0:19:22.800 the surface yet. In the fall of nineteen fifty nine, 0:19:23.000 --> 0:19:26.000 the company established its first office in North America, the 0:19:26.080 --> 0:19:30.560 Matt Sushida Electric Corporation of America in New York. By 0:19:30.600 --> 0:19:34.080 this time, the company was producing transistor radios, and again 0:19:34.119 --> 0:19:36.840 it was not the first company to do this. Matt 0:19:36.840 --> 0:19:41.719 Sushida was not necessarily an innovator of technology, but it 0:19:41.720 --> 0:19:46.600 did adopt them pretty quickly in order to produce consumer 0:19:46.640 --> 0:19:51.320 products for the various markets. Engineers at Bell Labs were 0:19:51.359 --> 0:19:53.760 actually the first to develop the transistor all the way 0:19:53.800 --> 0:19:56.840 back in n seven, though the transistor they made was 0:19:57.040 --> 0:19:59.359 far too large to be used in electronics. It was 0:19:59.400 --> 0:20:02.400 more of a of concept. However, it didn't take long 0:20:02.440 --> 0:20:07.280 for companies to start manufacturing smaller transistors and other companies 0:20:07.320 --> 0:20:10.920 to then take those transistors and use them in consumer products. 0:20:11.200 --> 0:20:13.800 So by the late nineteen fifties, Matte Sushida would join 0:20:14.080 --> 0:20:19.159 lots of other electronic companies that we're already producing transistor radios. 0:20:19.320 --> 0:20:23.240 The main purpose of the transistor was to amplify signals, 0:20:23.280 --> 0:20:26.359 something that vacuum tubes had done before. And I've talked 0:20:26.359 --> 0:20:28.359 a lot about how this works, so really we just 0:20:28.400 --> 0:20:30.960 need to think about the general concept. You start off 0:20:30.960 --> 0:20:34.960 with a relatively weak signal that holds the information you want, 0:20:35.359 --> 0:20:38.679 like a radio broadcast, for example. So you've got a 0:20:38.760 --> 0:20:41.960 radio and a radio antenna picks up the broadcast signal. 0:20:42.440 --> 0:20:47.320 The antenna converts that signal into a weak electric signal. Technically, 0:20:47.400 --> 0:20:50.879 the antenna is not converting anything. It's all about physics. 0:20:50.920 --> 0:20:54.199 But anyway, you get the radio broadcast converted into a 0:20:54.240 --> 0:20:57.760 weak electric signal that goes through the antenna to the radio. 0:20:57.800 --> 0:21:02.479 But that signals typically not wrong enough to really drive 0:21:02.600 --> 0:21:06.439 something like speakers effectively, So if you try to listen 0:21:06.800 --> 0:21:09.199 to a radio that didn't have an amplifier in it, 0:21:09.680 --> 0:21:12.760 you would get a very quiet result. So the purpose 0:21:12.960 --> 0:21:17.560 of the transistor is to boost this signal without otherwise 0:21:17.640 --> 0:21:20.560 altering it. So it's all about giving the signal more oomph, 0:21:20.840 --> 0:21:23.359 but not changing it in any other way because that 0:21:23.400 --> 0:21:28.120 would just scramble the output. Vacuum tubes served that purpose 0:21:28.160 --> 0:21:32.119 for decades, but they are large, they're delicate, they're kind 0:21:32.160 --> 0:21:35.520 of like lightbulbs, and they put out a lot of heat, 0:21:35.760 --> 0:21:40.520 so they weren't ideal for portable electronics in general. They 0:21:40.640 --> 0:21:44.240 do still serve a purpose in electronics today, particularly with 0:21:44.840 --> 0:21:51.080 musicians amplifiers. Guitarists swear by amplifiers that are too be 0:21:51.119 --> 0:21:54.720 amplifiers versus transistor amplifiers, and as soon as I get 0:21:54.720 --> 0:21:57.680 my guitar this week, i'll be able to tell you 0:21:57.800 --> 0:22:02.800 my thoughts on it. Kind of The transistor, though, allowed 0:22:02.840 --> 0:22:07.399 for menturization because the transistors themselves were smaller than vacuum tubes, 0:22:07.720 --> 0:22:10.080 and also because they didn't put out as much heat, 0:22:10.440 --> 0:22:12.639 so you could have a small reform factor and not 0:22:12.680 --> 0:22:16.639 worried about it overheating and becoming a problem. Panasonics transistor 0:22:16.720 --> 0:22:19.520 radios would become a success story in the United States, 0:22:19.880 --> 0:22:23.399 driving much of the overseas sales numbers, and it didn't 0:22:23.480 --> 0:22:27.000 hurt that the name pana Sonic applied equally well to 0:22:27.160 --> 0:22:30.560 radios as it did to the speaker systems that came before. 0:22:31.240 --> 0:22:35.640 In nineteen sixty, the company developed its first color television set, 0:22:35.720 --> 0:22:40.560 the National K twenty one ten. So since this is national, 0:22:40.640 --> 0:22:43.159 we know that this was for the Japanese market. This 0:22:43.200 --> 0:22:45.920 one had a twenty one inch screen on the diagonal 0:22:46.200 --> 0:22:48.600 and it was a hefty critter. It was inside a cabinet. 0:22:49.119 --> 0:22:52.360 Um it's kind of hard to cover everything that the 0:22:52.400 --> 0:22:55.480 company was doing. And while I'm mostly familiar with the 0:22:55.480 --> 0:22:59.359 consumer electronics side of the company, that was really just 0:22:59.520 --> 0:23:03.000 one to vision of many. This is a company that 0:23:03.040 --> 0:23:06.480 did lots and does lots of stuff. It's just that 0:23:06.560 --> 0:23:09.520 the things that are most visible to to me happen 0:23:09.560 --> 0:23:12.159 to be the consumer electronics. Mattsshida was also in the 0:23:12.160 --> 0:23:16.080 business of producing heavy grade electrical equipment for industrial purposes, 0:23:16.440 --> 0:23:20.680 like stuff like transformers. More than meets the eye, So 0:23:21.680 --> 0:23:24.080 you know, I haven't talked about transformers in a while either. 0:23:24.359 --> 0:23:26.480 This is why I love doing these history episodes. By 0:23:26.480 --> 0:23:29.159 the way, guys, it lets me fit in tons of 0:23:29.400 --> 0:23:33.520 how this tech works, so I sneak in some technical 0:23:34.080 --> 0:23:37.879 education along with historical education. So transformers are a way 0:23:37.880 --> 0:23:42.280 to change the voltage when you're transmitting electricity from one 0:23:42.320 --> 0:23:46.600 place to another as long as that electricity is alternating current, 0:23:46.960 --> 0:23:49.720 meaning that the direction that the current flows and switches 0:23:49.760 --> 0:23:52.480 many times a second. And it's all because of some 0:23:52.600 --> 0:23:57.760 interesting elements of electro magnetism. Now I mentioned electro magnets 0:23:57.760 --> 0:24:00.280 with tape recorders, so this kind of builds on at 0:24:00.440 --> 0:24:04.399 If you run a conductive wire around, say an iron core, 0:24:05.000 --> 0:24:08.360 and then you run a current through that coil of wire, 0:24:08.880 --> 0:24:13.080 you'll create a magnetic field. With direct current, this ends 0:24:13.119 --> 0:24:16.200 up being a steady magnetic field, but if you use 0:24:16.359 --> 0:24:21.479 alternating current, you get a fluctuating magnetic field. The field 0:24:21.640 --> 0:24:24.520 changes as the direction of the current changes. So the 0:24:24.520 --> 0:24:27.560 magnetic field fluctuates as many times a second as the 0:24:27.600 --> 0:24:31.800 current changes direction. Now, one thing that is super cool 0:24:32.000 --> 0:24:35.600 about electro magnets is that if you put one next 0:24:35.640 --> 0:24:39.399 to another one and you run alternating current through the 0:24:39.560 --> 0:24:42.639 first of your two electromagnets, and the second one doesn't 0:24:42.640 --> 0:24:45.960 have anything going through it at all, that fluctuating magnetic 0:24:46.000 --> 0:24:51.159 field from that primary electro magnet will induce current to 0:24:51.280 --> 0:24:55.720 flow through the second electro magnet. So, just as electricity 0:24:55.760 --> 0:24:58.840 flowing through a coil will create a magnetic field, a 0:24:58.960 --> 0:25:04.320 coil in countering a magnetic field will have current flow 0:25:04.400 --> 0:25:08.400 through it. Now, that's true as long as the magnetic 0:25:08.440 --> 0:25:11.520 field is changing in some way. The changing magnetic field 0:25:11.600 --> 0:25:14.480