The Sony Corporation is definitely not the typical Japanese corporation. It was founded in Tokyo in 1946 by Akio Morita with funds provided by his father. Ibuka Masaru of the Japan Precision Instrument Company was brought into the company upon its founding to provide technical expertise on the manufacture of technical equipment. The original name was Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation. It was not until 1958 that the name was changed to Sony. The intended purpose of the company was manufacture technical products for consumers. But initially it produced only industrial technical devices.

In 1950 the company entered the commercial consumer products field with a tape recorder. Shortly thereafter it had the opportunity to acquire the technology for producing the recently invented transistor for $25 thousand. It was a tremendous bargain and the company had the funds available. But it had to secure the permission of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI). MITI decided that the company was not a serious contender in the technical industry. It took Sony six month to get MITI to reverse its decision and allow Sony to invest its own funds. Sony went on to build the first minaturized transistor radio.

In 1960 Sony developed a minature televison with a 20 centimeter screen. In 1968 it introduced the Trinitron television tube, a picture tube superior to its predecessors. The next year it marketed a color video cassette recorder.

By 1972 it had developed a new superior video casset technology which it called Betamax. Despite is technical superiority Betamax lost out to the VHS technology promoted by the Matsushita corportion.

(To be continued.)