Nobutoshi Kihara, who died on February 13 aged 84, was the engineering genius behind some of Sony’s greatest hits: transistor radios and televisions, camcorders and other bantamweight electro nics that made the company a world-leader and “Made in Japan” a stamp of distinction.
Nobutoshi Kihara displaying Sony's PV-100 video tape recorder, produced in 1963 Photo: AFP/GETTY
Nicknamed “Sony’s treasure” and “godlike” by his fellow engineer (and Sony’s co-founder) Masaru Ibuka, Kihara was credited with being able to create a handmade model of anything within 24 hours. His innovations in magnetic recording and playback technologies laid the foundations for today’s iPod-toting, YouTube-watching generation.
He was born in Tokyo in 1926 into a middle-class family with engineering in its blood. During the war he attended Waseda University, where he first came in contact with Ibuka, who was teaching there. The experience encouraged him to apply for a job at the nascent Sony, whose headquarters was being established amid the ruins of bombed-out Tokyo.
At the time Kihara was building his own radios as a hobby and he was soon involved in the field that would make Sony a global household name and Japan the world’s leading electronics maker — miniaturisation.
Tape recorders and radios were then cumbersome, power-thirsty and too expensive for widespread use. When Sony’s founders realised that to attract customers they needed to shrink the devices, make them affordable and reduce their power consumption, they called on Kihara .
Though a simple concept, this was extremely difficult to achieve. Many suppliers of components complained that it was impossible to shrink parts to the extent that finished devices could be carried around effortlessly. But, urged on by Kihara, many eventually managed it, spawning an engineering revolution not just at Sony but also across a whole network of Japanese companies.
After developing Japan’s first tape recorder and magnetic recording tape, a compact audio cassette and Japan’s first transistor radio, Kihara addressed another major challenge of the emerging consumer electronics field — creating videotape and videotape recorders (VTR), and then (most difficult of all) the technology to record broadcasts in colour.
Kihara came up with a VTR prototype in 1958 and then developed a slimmed-down version for the home market in 1965, which led to the invention of the cassette-like Betamax system 10 years later. Soon video recorders were in every home.
Betamax was deemed a triumph for Kihara and appeared poised to become another coup for Sony. Unfortunately for the company, which had by then grown to be the world’s leading electronics firm, a rival format, VHS, suddenly emerged to dominate the market. Not only was VHS cheaper, it could also record for up to two hours, compared to Betamax’s one hour. Sony was faced with its first big flop, a defeat made more painful for Kihara because he was sure that his technology was superior. “My blood boils,” he wailed.
Despite this setback, Sony was entering a golden period. The Sony Walkman, forerunner of the iPod, became a worldwide sensation. But while Kihara is sometimes erroneously referred to as “Mr Walkman”, he in fact only laid the transistorisation and miniaturisation groundwork necessary to realise the audio cassette player.
Instead, he drew on his disappointment with Betamax to produce compact, lightweight VTRs, which also featured built-in cameras – thus the camcorder age was born. Such was Kihara’s vision that Sony’s current head, Howard Stringer, insisted recently that the company still maintains “an unassailable position in the area of video technology” due to his work.
Before retiring in 2006, Kihara established the Sony-Kihara Research Centre in Tokyo, a laboratory dedicated to taking image processing further into today’s digital applications. “My message has always been to break through what is common sense and common knowledge, and make the impossible possible,” he once said in an interview.
He is survived by his wife and three children.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/8339181/Nobutoshi-Kihara.html
Kihara came up with a VTR prototype in 1958 and then developed a slimmed-down version for the home market in 1965, which led to the invention of the cassette-like Betamax system 10 years later. Soon video recorders were in every home.
Betamax was deemed a triumph for Kihara and appeared poised to become another coup for Sony. Unfortunately for the company, which had by then grown to be the world’s leading electronics firm, a rival format, VHS, suddenly emerged to dominate the market. Not only was VHS cheaper, it could also record for up to two hours, compared to Betamax’s one hour. Sony was faced with its first big flop, a defeat made more painful for Kihara because he was sure that his technology was superior. “My blood boils,” he wailed.
Despite this setback, Sony was entering a golden period. The Sony Walkman, forerunner of the iPod, became a worldwide sensation. But while Kihara is sometimes erroneously referred to as “Mr Walkman”, he in fact only laid the transistorisation and miniaturisation groundwork necessary to realise the audio cassette player.
Instead, he drew on his disappointment with Betamax to produce compact, lightweight VTRs, which also featured built-in cameras – thus the camcorder age was born. Such was Kihara’s vision that Sony’s current head, Howard Stringer, insisted recently that the company still maintains “an unassailable position in the area of video technology” due to his work.
Before retiring in 2006, Kihara established the Sony-Kihara Research Centre in Tokyo, a laboratory dedicated to taking image processing further into today’s digital applications. “My message has always been to break through what is common sense and common knowledge, and make the impossible possible,” he once said in an interview.
He is survived by his wife and three children.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/8339181/Nobutoshi-Kihara.html
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