1948 - 1955
|
Corporate history and product development |
1948 |
 |
Tokai Electronics Laboratory (original company of Hamamatsu Photonics) established. |
The "G5E" phototube manufactured during the time of Tokai Electronics. (1950) |
1949 |
|
1950 |
|
1951 |
|
1952 |
|
1953 |
|
Hamamatsu TV Co., Ltd. (former name) established with capital of 500,000 yen. |
|
|
Production of phototubes began. |
|
1954 |
|
1955 |
|
Capital increased to 1 million yen. |
|
|
Carried out funded research project "Pilot research into gamma-ray scintillators (Ca-OW)" under the Science and Technology Agency's "Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy" program. |
|
|
1955: The Ebitsuka Factory |
|
Originally, our firm was called "Hamamatsu TV". The name came about because Heihachiro Horiuchi, who was the founder of the firm, was a student of Kenjiro Takayanagi and later took over his professor's spirit and technology, establishing the coupling of opto-technology and industry as the doctrine behind the founding of the company and the business goal of the firm. Because of that connection with his former professor, Horiuchi wanted a name that would make people think of Dr. Takayanagi. The name Takayanagi was largely synonymous
with the concept of "television" at that time, so he named the firm Hamamatsu TV. The name was often mistaken for a television station, and up-and-coming television personalities would visit the company in search of interviews, or requests would come in for repair of household televisions. |
Assembly and modulation of undewwater cameras. |
|
Hamamatsu TV became involved in television applications in the field of science and industry when we were asked by Professor Nobuyuki Kawamoto of Mie University to make an underwater camera for observing fish reefs. This camera was produced by Fumio Yokozawa, former auditor, who worked part-time at the company and was planning to join as a regular employee the following spring. Despite being unable to obtain sufficient parts and measuring instruments, he put in many long, lonely hours over a four-month period before completing
the first television camera in the history of Hamamatsu Photonics – a camera created entirely by a part-time worker. |
Less than two years after the company was first established, when we were still a small-scale operation on the level of a backstreet factory, we were given government funding to conduct what was, for us, an epochal research project. At the time, Japan was in the early stages of developing atomic power, and we were working hard to produce our own technology and equipment domestically. Hamamatsu TV applied to conduct trial testing of a scintillator (a type of fluorophor that is a transparent crystal which lights up in response to incident x-rays) that is used to measure radiation.
The other companies that had applied were all fairly eminent corporations, so we were concerned about whether our topic would be approved, but we passed the test with ease. Having the funds to cover the research costs, something we would have had a hard time scraping out of our own budget, provided us with a very positive opportunity.
|
|
