welcome to another episode in our japan series in this video we will discuss many
incredible inventions that you probably didn't know were created by the japanese
so without further ado let's start the video nihongo wakarimash
let's talk about modern dry cells which most of you probably know as the everyday batteries that
are commonly used in portable devices calculators clocks and transistors these are a single
single-use non-rechargeable battery with an output voltage of 1.5 on january 13 1864 sakizo yai
was born to the house of an upper-class samurai family in nagaoka a city in the nigata prefecture
unfortunately when sikhiso was six his father died and the house went bankrupt in 1885 at the age of
21 sikhiso invented a continuous electric clock and just two years later in 1887 he invented a dry
cell battery for that clock he used a paste electrolyte with enough moisture to allow
for current to flow by converting chemical energy into electricity however he tragically
could not apply for his patent because he had no money to pay for the patent fee
in 1927 he suffered from gastric cancer and acute pneumonia and left this world on june 1st 1927
i'm sure it's hard to imagine a functioning world without modern calculators
however humanity has been using various types of calculators since ancient times
a few examples of these ancient calculators are the sumerian abacus the roman abacus
the chinese suanpan abacus the antikythera and the russian abacus while these were certainly useful
for their time we're going to focus on the modern pocket calculator a contribution of japan in 1957
the model 14a calculator was released by the japanese company casio it was the world's
first compact calculator and was based on relay technology however it was still bulky and had to
be built into a desk as a result of its weight of 120 kilograms or 264 pounds in 1964 the world saw
the first all-transistor electronic calculator the cs10a which was designed by another japanese
company sharp corporation fortunately this model weighed 25 kilograms or 55 pounds which was five
times lighter than the casio 14a calculator while the size had been improved the price
was too high around five hundred thousand yen or four thousand five hundred and eighty six dollars
as much as a car still seven hundred calculators were sold in six months this
it wasn't until a later innovation that electronic calculators became more accessible
in 1970 the first three portable calculators appeared in japan and they were soon marketed
around the world those models were sanyo icc0081 mini calculator weighted at one kilogram the
canon pocketronic weighing in at 902 grams and sharp qt8b micro compete weighed 1.4 kilograms
it became an icon that made in japan know-how including miniaturization and cost reduction
when you think about video games it's likely one of the first things that comes to mind
is the playstation however it took time for the playstation to become the mega console we all
know and love today it all began in 1994 after so many attempts to enter into the video game market
including unsuccessful partnerships with both nintendo and sega sony finally decided to go at it
alone and release their first original playstation home console the ps1 as it came to be known was
a massive hit it became the first legendary home console in history that sold more than 100 million
units but why was it so successful before 1994 most video games were based on 2d graphics which
were widely accepted among gamers but sony's new console was capable of playing 3d games and with
the release of more 3d titles sony had dethroned nintendo as the king of the home consoles
by the end of the ps1's life 1 300 games had been exclusively produced for this home console
despite the popularity of the console a majority of us probably don't know that playstation was the
brainchild of ken kutaragi a sony executive who managed one of the company's hardware
engineering divisions he is also known as the father of the playstation because of his work
with not only the original playstation but also development of the successor models the ps2
and ps3 today's consoles are a product of a lot of development that has occurred in the
video game industry yet even today we can see that many of the most advanced games
are exclusively built for modern playstation devices just a few of these mind-blowing games
released as playstation exclusives include bloodborne unchartered for a thief send
you good great warrant how do we get the sale we just get hitting downhill brilliant
final fantasy 7 remake
horizon zero dawn even if you do catch what you're after
how do you know
shadow of the colossus
the last of us part two you have no idea what you're walking into what are you doing you
don't know how large that group is marvel spider-man you don't need to kill us too
this territory is ours now not today
and god of war who's dead well for a dead man who didn't seem pretty keen on seeing he wasn't found
if he's out there we gotta find him come in you've probably heard the popular 1789 french phrase
purportedly uttered by marie antoinette if they have no bread let them eat cake
unfortunately for marie antoinette the average citizen did not find that advice helpful
and soon after the royal family was dethroned following a bread shortage for centuries bread has
been an important staple to many cultures brett has even been traced back to the neolithic era
today 125 million tons of bread are consumed at an incredible cost of 220 billion dollars each
year but who made the creation of bread at this scale possible this is the story of ikuku tanaka
a japanese software engineer who invented the first bread making machine at masushita panasonic
in 1986 a decade later the bread maker gained enormous popularity in the west
before the invention of the bread maker she had joined the osaka international hotel in order
to learn everything about making bread by hand from the best chef baker in osaka she discovered
mechanical solutions to stretching and twisting the dough in a particular fashion at 27 to 28
degrees centigrade to bake this machine made bread she used a purpose-built oven which turned out to
be the secret for making tasty bread i'll bet this makes you wish you had some bread right now right
before the invention of electric rice cookers japanese women suffered while cooking rice on clay
stoves which required at least three hours to cook today i have an electric rice cooker at home which
i can say with absolute certainty is a lot easier than cooking rice on the stove with a modern
electric cooker you just put the rice and water in and walk away until it's cooked indeed it is
arguably one of the greatest products of the 20th century but the question is who invented it first
this is a story that takes place between 1951 and 1955 toshiba salesman
yamada surveyed japanese married women in japan about the process of cooking rice he identified
a lot of problems when it came to cooking rice in response to his findings yoshitara minami
who was a toshiba engineer came up with a series of prototypes for electric rice cookers
in 1956 toshiba's electric rice cooker hit the japanese home appliance market
in 1970 alone around 12 million 350 000 electric cookers were sold that was a huge number
minami's prototype was tested by his wife fumiko she battled away cooking rice all day long and
after he finished each prototype fumiko would use it to cook rice up on the roof under these and
in various other conditions the early designs were based on a pot sitting atop a pot filled
with water below which was the heat source the heat source had a switch that could turn off
when temperature exceeded 100 degrees celsius the resulting circulating steam could cook rice evenly
today there are tens of thousands of recipes that an electric rice cooker can cook including
soup eggs pasta cakes caramel yogurt and tofu the hard work of husband and wife had paid off
the appliance succeeded in greatly reducing the housework burden for japanese women
imagine what would happen if fiber optics technology suddenly disappeared indeed
the world would be in total chaos no one would be able to use telephones
the internet would be more or less shut down too including this youtube video nobody would be able
to make audio and video calls and watching tv from home would be impossible for most households
but who invented these fiber cables the name of this forgotten japanese scientist is junishi
nishizawa who did his studies at tohoku university he came up with the idea to use
light to transfer data inside a cylindrical fiber in 1963 he also invented the pin diode and static
inductor transistor along with optic fiber to transmit data from one place to another by sending
pulses of infrared light fiber optics rapidly gain popularity after their discovery because
compared to copper wires they could deliver data with higher bandwidth over a long distance without
facing electromagnetic interference these fiber cables use dough pans to reflect light inside
the cylindrical body and push it to the other end in 1975 after the discovery of gaas semiconductor
lasers these optics could only transmit data at a wavelength around 0.8 micrometers
with a data transfer speed of 5.6 megabytes per second however today a single fiber optic cable
can transmit data at a speed of 1.7 terabytes per second over a distance of up to 160 kilometers i'm
sure such powerful cables were completely beyond the imagination of even alexander graham bell
finally let's talk about d-pads also known as directional pads d-pads are used in so many
game controllers remote control units for tvs even on smartphones too it was a pretty simple
concept but it completely transformed the future of the electronics market before its invention
classic joysticks were commonly used in bulky gaming machines but what is the story of d-pad
the history of the d-pad begins in 1982 when nintendo was developing its donkey kong game
and watch handheld device in earlier game watch devices the games moved only on a single axis
with two buttons just for left and right but the new donkey kong game simultaneously introduced two
axes x and y a well-known nintendo engineer gunpei yokoi was the brain behind game watch handheld
realize that the use of traditional joysticks to play the new donkey kong would be uncomfortable
to use as well as aesthetically bulky and ugly to avoid using the traditional joystick
he invented a plus shaped button that was designed to behave like a seesaw the plushy
button was mounted on a metal ball in the center allowing it to be pushed down on all four sides
thus the d-pad was born which allowed for natural movements for left right up and
down keys the surprising fact is that nintendo didn't even realize the importance of the d-pad
until after it hit the market and initially the inventor didn't file a patent for it
but thanks to his fellow employee named ishiro sharai nintendo did eventually file
a patent for the d-pad on august 5th 1983. the patent lasted until 2005 after which it
entered the public domain and became a key feature on almost every gaming controller
you