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Sony: electronics ordered 'to go'by Yoshiko Hara It was part of the original company statement: "To establish an ideal factory that stresses a spirit of freedom and open-mindedness and where engineers with sincere motivation can exercise their technological skills to the highest level." And it has sustained the company for half a century.By hewing to that objective, Sony Corp. has carved out a position in Japan's electronics industry that is unique because of its strong worldwide identity vis-ý-vis its Japanese competitors. That recognition cannot be rivaled by other Japanese companies. Its history is punctuated by a number of world and Japanese firsts. Starting with Japan's first tape recorder, they include a steady miniaturization of today's typical range of consumer products: transistor radio, transistor TV, videotape recorder, home-use video cassette recorder, 3.5-inch floppy disk, CD player, 8-mm video, Mavica (electronic still camera), MiniDisk, digital VCR and flat-screen TV. But perhaps the epitome of Sony's miniaturization effort is the Walkman, an instrument that has simply changed the way the world listens to music. And the company has similarly overwhelmed competitors in the game market with its Play- Station while establishing its presence in the PC market. Behind it all is the company's research, work that was directed by Nobutoshi Kihara almost from its founding. Retired from Sony since 1988, Kihara is now president of Sony-Kihara Research Center Inc. — founded with Sony — where 72 researchers focus on computer graphics. Looking back at his long career, Kihara recalls that the spirit to pursue originality was always a guiding principle of Sony and, in fact, was embedded in the prospectus written by Masaru Ibuka, who co-founded the company with Akio Morita as Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo (Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corp.) in May 1946. The name was changed to Sony Corp. in 1958.
Ibuka clearly stated the vision of the new company: "We shall maintain our business operations small, advance technologically and grow in areas where large enterprises cannot enter due to their size. We shall be as selective as possible in our products and will even welcome technological challenges. We shall focus on highly sophisticated technical products that have great usefulness in society, regardless of the quantity involved. Moreover, we shall avoid any formal demarcation between electronics and mechanics and shall create our own unique products uniting the two fields, with a determination that other companies cannot overtake." While Ibuka and Morita were the well-known founders of Sony, Kihara was a principal engineer who transformed their ideas into products. Ibuka once described Kihara as being "like a wizard. When I explain some product idea to him, he handcrafts and comes up with one much better next day." But many years before Walkman and PlayStation, in the harsh economy after World War II, Sony had been making such custom products as communications equipment, measurement devices and electric heating mats. Then, after listening to the reproduced sound from a tape recorder brought to Japan by an American soldier in the U.S. occupation force Ibuka suggested that Kihara develop one. Kihara knew the principles of the tape recorder from his studies of wire recorders, but did not know what to use as magnetic particles. One book on magnets had a three-line explanation that said oxalic ferrite would become ferric oxide when burned. Morita took Kihara to wholesalers to find the powder, borrowed a frying pan from the kitchen to "roast" the stuff and the two watched as the cooked powder changed from yellow to brown and then to black. But it was the brown powder that was the ferric oxide they needed so Kihara watched carefully while the next batch was being roasted; when it turned brown he put it into water to stop the reaction. Then Kihara faced another problem: how to coat the tape with the powder. He tried cooked rice paste and gum glue, but neither was suitable. Finally, he succeeded by using a paint spray gun left by workers after the construction of Sony's second factory. He handmade a head and an amplifier and used two turntables for the experimental system. It was able to record and play back using the several meters of tape that Kihara had coated with magnetic powder. Success came just days after they had found the oxalic ferrite powder. Later, Sony engineers viewed a U.S. imported tape recorder at NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corp.) and within a week Kihara and his team built a prototype. Sony's first tape recorder, named Tapecorder Model G-the first tape recorder developed in Japan — was introduced to the market in 1950. Kihara called the 1950s Sony's period of learning and accumulating technologies from abroad. In the 1960s, Sony established its own technologies; in the 1970s, it was higher performance, compactness and volume production. The landmark all-transistor radio was the result of Ibuka's interest in transistors. In fact, Sony got basic transistor patents and a production license from Western Electronic in 1953, but Western Electric Co. did not share production knowhow with anybody. So while other major Japanese manufacturers bought production licenses from RCA Corp., Sony's limited budget forced it to develop its own transistor production skills. A U.S. company turned out the first all-transistor radio in 1954, but Sony followed in July 1955 and was the first radio manufacturer that made its own transistors. From the beginning, Sony engineers did research not just for research's sake but to develop products. "We build our labs depending on the direction of our product focus," says Kihara. "To develop magnetic-recording devices, a magnet tape laboratory was established. Then, when we started transistor-related product development, a central laboratory was established to include transistor research. At that time 'Could you do it?' was enough to launch an R&D project." Sony was seen as a guinea pig because even though it developed a new product like the transistor radio, other major manufacturers soon would catch up and overwhelm Sony in the market using their large production capability. Even Konosuke Matsushita, founder of Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., or Panasonic, once joked that Matsushita had a Tokyo laboratory named Sony. At first offended, Sony soon was proud of the label as proof of its spirit of rising to the challenge of a new product, says Kihara. Miniaturization soon became a modus operandi. Once, when Kihara completed a new tape recorder and showed it to Ibuka, the cofounder said, "OK, you proved that you could make it. So now can you make it much smaller?" Kihara then made the recorder into a portable model. Ibuka's response: "OK, please make it pocket size." It became company folklore that the chief of a product development team would show a mockup half the size or less of what was attainable at that time and then tell his team to develop a product that size. Ibuka's hunger for compactness spread into the video realm as well. When Ampex's professional videotape recorder was announced in 1957, Sony's reaction was quick. Kihara and his team of engineers completed a working prototype based on the Ampex format within two months after starting a development project. "It was a matter of course. We'd been doing research on magnetic recording. It was clear that video recording was possible if we could increase the relative speed of a head and make the tape larger," recalls Kihara. Kihara finally developed a compact recorder, dubbed CV-2000, aimed for home use in 1965. The CV-2000 was a monochrome recorder using half-inch open-reel tape, and its weight and price were less than a tenth that of other products available at that time. Ibuka pushed to make it in a cassette format and then "allow for color recording," says Kihara. That was the case with the Betamax videocassette recorder. The half-inch videocassette tape lost the video format war against VHS, but some videophiles argued that it had better picture quality even though it was much smaller than VHS. Kihara then wanted his engineers to develop a video format that would make the Betamax half its size. Minoru Morio achieved the 50 percent reduction to develop the now widely available 8-mm video and was promoted to executive vice president. "We are always thinking to make a product half the size, or a third. If it were easy, everybody would do it. But it is not so easy. And Sony does not introduce 'halfway' products," says Kihara. Tape density has been driving Sony recording technology. Tape recording density has increased from the very first 2-inch Ampex-type tape to 10 times for U-matic tape, 117 times for Betamax and 344 times for 8-mm video in LP mode, says Kihara. To a large extent Kihara was behind the density drive. Throughout the years, Kihara has emphasized the importance of hands-on experience and the know-how that it brings, saying, "Technology is accumulation of know-how. If you build a recorder by yourself, you will understand how gum rollers hold tape, why sound is wow-fluttering, etc. This is minute stuff and only those who build themselves understand why this part is located here and why it needs to be a particular shape." Having contributed to Sony's development of many technologies since his early 40s, Kihara continues to explore new ground. "Unless one breaks common sense, nothing becomes new and no innovation is made. Even if some authorities predict the limit of recording density, you should not believe it. If you continue to think about it, you will come across an innovation." The Century of the Engineer: Companies that made a difference
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