History of Sony Computer Entertainment(early game console development)

At the Consumer Electronics Show in june 1991, Sony revealed to the world a video games console, which was joined with Nintendo. This SNES with the technology of a CD-ROM drive was a project driven by Ken Kutaragi, a Sony exclusive who came from its hardware engineering division. This was mainly Nintendo's chance to take a huge leap to a new world of multimedia but also a way for Kutaragi to show his company how important the games industry is and what can be achieved. Although the very day after Sony's announcement, Nintendo stated that it would be breaking its deal with Sony by partnering with Phillips instead.

First design of the playStation (SNES with a CD-ROM drive)

Sony's president Norio Ohga was enraged and humiliated. The decision was rather sudden but there was problems between the two companies for some time, like for example there was a agreement with over how revenue would be collected because Sony had proposed to take care of money made from the CD sales while Nintendo would collect from the cartridge sales and said that royalties would be organised later. when chris Deering who at the time was working at the Sony-owned Columbia Pictures said, "Nintendo went bananas, frankly, and said that we were stepping on its toll booth and that it was totally unacceptable." Nintendo and Sony just couldn't agree on terms and fell apart.

(Chris Deering is to present day head of the PlayStation business in europe.) 

Sony Computer Entertainment

Sony Computer Entertainment was founded in 1993 but was established in America in may 1994 as Sony Computer Entertainment of America as a division of Sony Electronic Publishing. The company was set in Foster City and was lead by a man called Steve Race.
   In the months leading up to releasing the PlayStation in Western markets, the operations were restructured to have all video game marketing from Sony Imagesoft to be joint up into Sony Computer Entertainment America in july 1995 so most of the employees from Santa Monica transferred to Foster City. Shortly after Steve Race then resigned and a few days later became CEO of Spectrum HoloByte and his position at Sony Computer Entertainment America was then replaces with Martin Homlish a Sony Electronics veteran.
   In 1997 Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc was then re-established as a completely owned supplement of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc for a worldwide structuring.

Some of Sony's major products

Type-G and Type-H tape recorders (1950)

   Japan's first tape recorders. this product had tape speed of 19cm per second. With Sony's exclusive small-hub reel, the machine accepted tapes in reel diameters of up to 10 inches. Units were delivered to the supreme court and various other government agencies, earning its nickname *Type- G* for government use only. A year later the Type-H was developed, which was for home use and also was a lot lighter than the Type-G.




TV8-301 (1960)

World's first direct-view portable transistor TV. This model was developed based on Sony's extensive knowledge in radio technology. In a time when TVs were thought to be a living room asset only but this piece of technology moved the invention of television to the next level.


TV5-303 (1962)

Made to bring television to the automobile environment and was the worlds smallest and lightest monochrome TV, this was mainly known from its nickname *micro TV.*
(famous slogan: Transistors have changed TV)


PV-100 (1963)

professional use transistor-based videotape recorder, using a 1.5 head system leaded to it being lighter than the first design. First design weighed 200kg, the PV-100 weighed 60kg (big improvement)


KV-1310 (1968)

The first in Sony's exclusive line of Trinitron colour TVs. This model gave about twice the brightness of televisions using conventional shadow mask tubes. This was a milestone product showing Sony's expertise in colour TVs

History of Sony research video

Very good source of research, the video explains some of Sonys major product releases and how and where they were manufactured.

1) 1950 first tape recorder in japan
2) 1955 first transistor radio (already researched)
3) 1960 worlds first transistor TV set
4) 1962 5 inch micro TV set
5) 1963 worlds first all transistor video corder
6) 1968 3 drawn colour TV (one of the most important products)

History of Sony

History

In the beginning there was Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo K.K. (Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation) but to date it is known as Sony worldwide.

1945

   Sony was originated in the late of 1945 just after the Second World War with a man called Masaru Ibuka who ran a radio repair shop in a half broken department store owned by Shirokiya (Japan’s largest retailer during early 20^th century) which was in Nihonbashi of Tokyo. It started by repairing broken radios and manufacturing small numbers of voltmeters.

1946

   As it came to May 7^th 1946, Ibuka was joined by his colleague Akio Morita and Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha was founded, the company started by building an automatic rice cooker

1950s

   When it reached the 1950s Ibuka travelled to the United States and learnt of Bell Laboratories working on a transistor invention. He then persuaded Bell Labs and acquired the technologies licence to his Japanese company. While the United States was using the technology for other purposes, Ibuka and Morita wanted to use it with communications. American companies like Regency Electronics and Texas Instruments made the first transistor radio as a joint project, but it was actually Ibuka’s company that made transistor radio successful in the commercial business.

    The first commercial transistor radio: the Sony TR-55 was released in 1955, although December of the same year they also released the Sony TR-72. This product favoured within Japan and other markets around the world like Canada, Australia, the Netherlands and Germany. Having six transistors, push/pull output and enhanced sound quality, the TR-72 carried on to be quite popular and was a bestseller through to the early 1960s.

TR-55

   May 1956, the company released a new design called the TR-6, that was slimmer and the sound quality was capable to matching portable tube radios.

   Because of this piece of equipment Sony contracted Atchan, the cartoon character created by Fuyuhiko Okabe, which then became the companies advertisement character. The character finalised to then be known as Sony Boy, the cartoon advert to be shown with TR-6 being held to the characters ear. The character went on through to the mid sixties to represent the company with lots of other products.

TR-6

Finally in January 1958, Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo K.K. changed its name to Sony Corporation. It was very unusual for any of Japan’s companies to use Roman letters to spell its name but for Sony there was a lot of thought behind the matter. Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo K.K.’s principal bank at the time had strong feelings about the name because they didn’t want the companies name to be tied to any particular industry.

   

The Sony brand - which is a conflation of Sonus, the Latin word for sound and Sonny (as in ‘young boy’) - first appeared in 1955. Totsuko became Sony Corporation three years later.

WORLD OF TECH NEWS

By Rob Mead

April 24th 2008