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I. Do you know products design in Japan? Can you characterize them? Are there any distinct features of Japanese design?

II. Read the story of Sony Corporation and say why these dates are important for Sony?

1968 1946 1979 1950 1958

SONY

Founded 1946 Tokyo, Japan

In the period immediately following the Second World War, Japan saw a huge surge in demand for radios, fuelled by a populace desperate for news from around the world. In September 1945 the engineer Masaru Ibuka responded to this opportunity by opening a small electrical repair shop in Tokyo. Called the Tokyo Tsushin Kenkyujo (Tokyo Telecommunications Research Institute), the business repaired war-damaged radios and shortwave units and made its own shortwave adapters and converters that could turn short-wave radios into all-wave receivers. Ibuka was joined by his friend, the physicist Akio Morita (1921-1999), and together they founded the Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha (Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation) in May 1946. Although the company's best-selling product was initially an electrically heated cushion, in 1950 - by now in larger premises - it introduced the first Japanese magnetic tape, the Soni-Tape, and also began marketing Japan's first reel-to-reel tape recorder, the G-Type. Later, the company developed the H-type, a less bulky and easier-to-use tape recorder in a case, which was more suitable for home use and was especially popular for educational purposes. In 1952 it developed a stereophonic audio system for the first Japanese stereo broadcast by NHK. That same year, Ibuka's company managed to obtain a licence to manufacture the transistors in 1954 and the following year introduced the first Japanese transistor radio, the TR-55. This was followed by the world's first pocket-sized transistor radio, the TR-63 (1957)- In 1958, aware of the need to appeal not just to Japanese consumers but to a global audience, the company changed its name to Sony Corporation, which sounded more Western. Around this time Ibuka noted: "The days of radio are over. The future lies in television", and in 1959 the company launched the first-ever transistor television, the TV8-301. In 1968 the small but revolutionary Trinitron colour televisions were first introduced. They included the TV5-303, the smallest and lightest micro-television in the world, which created a boom in America for micro-TVs. Sony's pioneering miniaturization of electronic technology continued with the introduction of the first Walkman personal stereo in 1979. With excellent and unwavering sound reproduction, the light and highly portable Walkman was an instant success and initially Sony could not keep up with consumer demand. Unlike conventional stereos with large speakers, the Walkman needed only a small amount of battery power because the sound was directed straight into the listener's ears. Sony has subsequently produced many versions of this landmark design, including models suitable for sporting activities. It went on to launch a flat-screened portable television, the Watchman, in 1982, and a portable compact disc player, the Discman, in 1990. More recently, Sony has been developing various digital technology products, including its miniature Memory Stick, which provides compact portable storage for digital data, and the sound-responsive AIBO robotic dog, which has infra-red eyes and can be trained to perform tricks. Sony predicted: "The Eighties was the age of the PC and the Nineties was the age of the Internet, the 2000s will be the age of the robot."