Never Lose Hope : Amazing Story

Do you know who this guy is?

This is Akio. He was born in Nagoya, Japan in 1921. His family had a businesss - they made soya sauce and sake. Akio was the oldest of four children and his family pressurized him to take over the family business from his father. However, he rebelled (this wont be the first time Akio would take the path less traveled) and went to Osaka Imperial University to study Mathematics and Physics. He graduated in 1944 and like many young Japanese men of his time joined the army…a few months before the United States dropped the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

As you would expect, this was a difficult time for Japan as a whole. A year went by but in 1946, in the basement of a former department store, Akio and his business partner Masaru Ibuka set out to make Japan's first tape recorders. World War II had just ended, and even basic materials were scarce. For the tape, they used some mimeograph paper, which they cut into narrow strips with razor blades (yes by hand). For the magnetic coating, they melted oxalicferrite powder in a skillet to create ferric oxide, then painted it onto the paper strips. The sound was awful to everyone else but sweet melody for them when they finally got it to work. Four years later (in 1950), they would finally sell the first tape recorder in Japan under the name Tokyo Telecommunications Company. It took them another 7 years but they eventually introduced a new product - a pocket radio. However, the first model of the radio was actually slightly larger than the conventional shirt pocket in Japan. So, in all the marketing and for all their company’s employees they ordered shirts with slightly larger pockets.

But, post-war Japan wasn’t exactly a hot market for high-end (and expensive) electronics. So, Akio had to expand to Japan’s conquerors in the second world war - the United States. Just 14 years after the end of the war, Akio’s Japanese company would receive an order from Bell Labs in America to produce transistors. But Akio wouldn’t stop there - he took whatever he learned to produce the World’s first transistor television.

By the 1980’s Akio’s company was ubiquitous in American media from televisions, to music systems to radio everything bore the name of his creation. Eventually, he even branched out into other avenues such as media production and banking. By this time though, Akio had changed the name of his company. In order to reflect its origins in sound (in latin “Sonus”) he called it Sony. This is the story of Akio Morita - the founder of Sony.