Golden days

Up until that point, Hamamatsu TV had always been involved in electron tube products such as phototubes. Our first foray into semiconductor products was the CdS cell. Sakio Suzuki, who was in charge of development, succeeded in developing the product after repeated trials and errors which he carried out on his own, enveloped in a cloud of cadmium sulfide powder. One day at the end of 1958, an order came in for 1,000 CdS cells per month for use in adjusting the brightness of television cathode ray tubes. As a company that had up until that time been producing multiple products in small lots, it was our first experience with mass production, and we had to mobilize all of our employees on the production side to get the order filled. The development of the CdS cell ended up bringing about many positive outcomes, among them an accumulation of semiconductor technology and a new sense of unity in-house, after all of the employees had worked together day and night on the production effort.

"We'll call Hamamatsu TV the 'king'"

Among light detecting devices, photomultiplier tubes have particularly outstanding characteristics. By the beginning of 1955, we had the capability to produce chemical analyzers using photomultiplier tubes, and at the same time domestic demand was growing. Around that time, one of our customers said to us, "If Hamamatsu TV could produce photomultiplier tubes, we would call you the 'king' of the industry." That made our engineers realize the necessity for development of these tubes, and provided the motivation for them to undertake the project. The photomultiplier tube that they developed through many trials and tribulations was far superior to those of other companies, and that product was what gave us a solid footing as an opto-technology company.