THE ENGINEER: The Secret of Sony Technology

This book is the history of the development of technology at Sony Corporation written by the legendary engineer Nobutoshi Kihara, who supported Mr. Masaru Ibuka, one of Sony founders. Working as his right arm, Kihara developed a number of products that established Sony as a global leader in technology. Not only was he key to development, Kihara’s engineering philosophy and approach to engineering influenced many engineers at Sony. The year after the end of World War II, Tokyo Communications Industry (Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo, Sony’s predecessor) was established as a tiny wooden shed in the area ruined by the war. The following year, Kihara became a member of the company as the first year recruit employee. Thanks to Kihara, Sony completed the first tape-recorder in Japan, and later developed the transistor type VTR, the full-scale home-use VTR and many other “World Firsts” and “Japanese Firsts” products that laid the foundation for the Japanese sound and video recording culture and helped in the postwar reconstruction of Japan.Kihara was always a free thinker not bound by the concepts of the establishment. Even now, his ideas and concepts for development would be of use to many managers and engineers in technology development.