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welcome to another ColdFusion video
Sonne one of the greatest companies of
the 20th century inventing the portable
radio Walkman Compact Disc the
PlayStation which brought in the true
era of 3d gaming and much much more
and this isn't to mention that there are
powerhouse in the film and music
industry today but how did they get
started I think the early history of
Sony is just so interesting that it's
worth its own video so we're going to
have a look at it today in September of
1945 a small workshop popped up in a
war-damaged department store in Tokyo it
was primitive and there weren't even any
windows in the shop the place was run by
a man named Masaru Ibuka
we had a handful of staff one months
later Ibaka and his group established
the Tokyo telecommunications Research
Institute at first they had no idea what
they were doing and even what to do most
of their salaries were paid from Ibaka
saving which were rapidly dwindling but
even at this time there was opportunity
waiting during the war the Japanese
military police modified the home radios
of Japanese citizens
this is to prevent them from tuning into
enemy propaganda due to high levels of
interest in global news after the War II
Booker's workshop through an opportunity
and made us debuts making small mods
that allowed the radio to receive all
types of waves now the Japanese
population could listen to anything they
wanted the radio modifications were so
popular the e-book is small Tokyo
workshop made it into a column in a
local Japanese magazine this magazine
article will pique the interest of a man
named Akio Morita as fate would have it
just a couple of years earlier Maresa
had actually met Ibaka while
commissioned at a sub-lieutenant in the
Imperial Japanese Navy the pair would
get back in contact with each other and
would work together at the Tokyo
workshop which would eventually become
signing in payment for repairing radios
the workshop would often receive rice as
well as the regular fee before long they
had too much what were they going to do
with all of this rice sitting around
what they decided to do was manufacture
an electric rice cooker of course the
rice cooker was technically Sony's first
product it was a primitive device made
by connecting aluminum electrodes to the
bottom of a wooden tub
the result was less than satisfactory it
always produced overcooked or
undercooked rice Sony's very first
product was deemed a failure on May 7th
1946 the small Tokyo workshop officially
launched as tots local company with 530
US dollars in capital no machinery and
little scientific equipment the
engineers would often depend on their
creativity and innovation to make up for
the lack of their equipment the very
first project as an official company was
an electrically heated cushion all it
did was draw complaints of burning
blankets and mattresses
it was another failure these guys meet
as a hit product or this company would
soon go under that's what the cool
workshop decided it was time to get
serious
the next project would be a magnetic
recorder they immediately encountered
difficulties as it was a rarity even in
the u.s. the only information that they
had was that involved a plastic tape
coated with a magnet
material amazingly after borrowing a
frying pan from the kitchen roasting
some powdered chemicals and using their
creativity this small team managed to
create a ferric oxide powder that was
slide enough to create discernible audio
when used on magnetic tape in early 1952
prototype recorders called the G type
and a tiler released the G type was made
for industrial use and had a recording
time of one hour and the a type was
designed for home use and had a
recording time of 30 minutes with tape
recorders were a hit in Japan
influencing society from home use all
the way to being effective teaching aids
in schools D Booker saw that the same
could not be said for us tape recorders
as they were only being used by news
reporters and to transcribe speeches the
pair looked to broaden their horizons
Masaru Ibuka made the decision to take a
scouting tour of the biggest market of
them all the USA for context America was
the economic powerhouse of the world
from 1946 up until the early 60s the
restrained consumer demand from the war
was released like a floodgate this built
up consumer demand combined with sound
economic policies created unprecedented
strong economic growth as well as a huge
middle class all of this meant that
there are lots of consumers in America
cracking the American market would be
the Holy Grail the thing was Americans
were building cars electronics early
computers house appliances and
everything else they seemed to have it
all what more could they possibly want
the toluca company needed to create a
completely new and revolutionary product
to achieve this you usually need a
revolutionary technology to enable it
luckily that revolutionary technology
would soon arrive the transistor a new
name a new device that could do many of
the jobs done by the vacuum tube and
many that you can't do so context the
transistor was invented in 1948 but Bell
Laboratories Western Electric the Perry
company at Bell Laboratories held the
patent rights for manufacturing the
transistor and had just made them
available to anyone who would pay
royalties this was a huge deal
transistors so what you might be asking
well without them our modern world would
not exist in any form whatsoever
transistors replaced bulky vacuum tube
at a tiny fraction of the size
that's why radios and TVs of the 50s was
so huge transistors with a step between
the old analog world and the world of
today with integrated circuits and
silicon chips let's see how the
transistor and cube measure up first off
the vacuum tube is power-hungry relative
like this generally demands a watt or
more of electricity a millionth of a
watt is enough for the transistor so now
that you know the importance of the
transistor let's continue one day a
friend in the u.s. came to see equal car
and informed him that Western Electric
was going to release their transistor
patent to interested companies are you
interested the friend Austin Western
electrics transistor was in need of much
improvement it had a very low power
output making it only good for things
like hearing aids but evil could you
that his workshop team loved new
challenges on the other hand it would
cost the company twenty five thousand
dollars money which they just didn't
have and would have to borrow ebook I
took a gamble he said yes
tasuku had already developed the tape
and tape recorder all by itself with no
technical support or advice from any
company
Western Electric was impressed by this
and decided that their transistor patent
would be put to good use with a Japanese
company so what was this revolutionary
product going to be it had to be for
everyone it would be the portable and
personal transistor radio the odds were
stacked against them and most people
thought that it was impossible for such
a small company like top circles to make
a transistor radio a device which even
the American companies could not produce
a transistor development task force was
formed immediately the most capable
staff including
chemical experts as well as mechanical
and electrical engineers were brought
together said that the entire company's
future on the fact that a yet unproven
transistor technology would change the
world after a year of tinkering the team
discovered that they could boost the
transistors low power output by
injecting microscopic amounts of
phosphorus allowing more free electrons
to flow after this major breakthrough it
wasn't long before the first transistor
radio was a reality it was called the TR
55 around the same time as the Japanese
prototype the Americans would beat them
to the punch with the Regency tr1
released in 1954 it was the first truly
portable radio and the first ever
transistor radio the only problem was
that the Americans were using the old
weaker transistor technology this meant
that the radio had an extremely low
volume and it sold poorly as a
consequence one year later in 1955 the
two top circle co-founders would travel
to America to show off their latest
transistor radio the TR 50 fires
interest for the new technology was
immediately strong there was still one
problem though Americans had trouble
saying Tatsu cool the name was changed
to Sony which was a blend of two words
one was the Latin word and sonís meaning
sound and the other was funny a common
slang term used in 1950s America to
address a boy after the name change
Slaney were almost ready to take the
world by storm unfortunately they were
only offered distribution if their
product could be sold under American
brand names because of this the Sony TR
55 was only sold in Japan but they'll be
back
for the American market they went all
out with the Sony TR 63 released in 1957
it was technically far more advanced
than anything that had come before with
this being the world's smallest radio it
had to have a sales pitch to match and
here it was a radio that could fit in
your pocket there was only one problem
though it didn't fit in the average
sized pocket the solution was a little
bit sneaky Sony made people from their
sales team wear bigger pockets that were
custom we made to fit the radios but at
least I could fit now
from then on orders for the new device
came flooding in the Americans loved the
Sony TR 63 and it was wildly popular
with teenagers some music historian
states of the 1957 Sony TR 63 was
instrumental in the rise of
rock-and-roll music because it allowed
kids to independently listen to their
music finally freed from the tyranny of
their turn Sony was truly in business
with the success of their radio Sony had
officially launched a new era of
technology consumer micro electronics
with radio sales taking off the company
was able to expand globally by 1960
even though going from a small fledgling
workshop to a global company in such a
short amount of time wasn't credible
nobody could have known that this was
just the very beginning and that's where
we'll leave it today I hope you enjoyed
that video in the very early origins of
Sony if you knew yelps feel free to
subscribe and if you want to see my
video on the origins of the original
PlayStation I'll leave a link below
anyway this has been to gogo you've been
watching cold fusion thanks for watching
and I'll see you guys again for the next
video
Cheers have a good one
cold fusion are you thinking
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