Sony transistor radio portable#

'Sony' was the name they arrived at by this process. The crux of the problem was pronounceability. That left the possibility of using four letters, and here they tried all sorts of combinations. They thought of taking the initials of Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo and calling themselves TTK, but that was too similar to the TKK adopted by railway companyTokyo Kyuko. But there were many three-letter company names already, such as RCA, NBC, CBS and NHK. They wanted a simple name that was easy to read, remember and pronounce in any language.Ī two-letter name would be the simplest, but in the Romanized alphabet this was next to impossible. The problem had bothered them for some time, and if they were going to change their company name they wanted to be sure they made the right choice. It was no use pushing a product with an unpronounceable name. Americans could not pronounce either Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo or Totsuko. with increasing frequency, one subject kept coming up. As Ibuka, Morita, Iwama and Higuchi visited the U.S. Before he left on this second trip to North America, they decided to label all Totsuko products with the Sony brand name. He was to take the new radio as a sample. and Canada in March of that year to conduct market surveys and business discussions. They had succeeded in building the TR-52 super-receive r prototype using five junction transistors. A Totsuko transistor radio produced sound. In January 1955 Totusko's labors reached fruition. But Totsuko was also spurred on by this setback to work even harder on developing their own transistors and circuits.

'If only MITI had issued our permit a little sooner.' thought Ibuka. In December 1954 - just in time for the Christmas season - an American company called Regency had brought out a commercial super-receiver, model TR-1, that used four transistors and had an output of 10mW. The world's first transistor radio had gone on the market in the U.S. While they were thus occupied, the Totsuko people heard discouraging news. Ibuka requested a smaller component with a good performance. For exampl e, Mitsumi Denki made the small variable condensers used in battery-operated vacuum tube radios. Ibuka's team went around to individual component manufacturers and persuaded them to make parts smaller.

Sony transistor radio portable#

Portable battery-powered radios which used vacuum tubes already existed, though they were on the large side. Ibuka and his team were to have many headaches before they were through. Transistor radios could of course be portable, but this would mean adapting many other parts and employing printed circuit boards. The market was well-supplied with vacuum tube radios, and there would have been no point in simply duplicating what they could do. Ibuka promptly agreed, and from then on transistors were numbered with the suffix 'seki.' Diodes were not placed in this category, however, to avoid having them fall under some future commodity tax. But Ibaragi favored using the word 'seki' (stone) as was done with clocks. After giving it some thought, Kasahara suggested they take the latter part of the word 'kessho' (crystal), and combine it with numbers, i.e., rokusho for six-transistor, nanasho for seven-transistor, etc. Ibuka was asking Kasahara's advice on what term to use for the new transistor. On the day, Ibuka, Kasahara, and Ibaragi of Mita Musen consulted with each other in a corner of the banquet room. In October, Japan's first transistor and a germanium diode were announced to a gathering at the Tokyo Kaikan. Privacy Policy.By June, the month that the Sendai plant started up, the transistor team that was proving such a strain on the company's finances had progressed and started to build a transistor radio prototype using both point-contact and junction-type transistors. Under which this service is provided to you. All content of the Dow Jones branded indices Â© S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC 2018Ĭable News Network.

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