Grasping the bangs of the goddess
Kenjiro Takayanagi eventually became the father of television technology. He said later that, as he was pursuing his research and was engaged in developing technology that would serve society ten to twenty years in the future, he occasionally had a mental image of the goddess of fortune, and always saw her portrayed as a beautiful woman with full bangs, but no hair at the back of her head. Playing with this idea, Takayanagi imagined that, in order to grasp the goddess of fortune, one would have to be one step ahead of her, wait for her to catch up, and then turn around
and grasp her by the bangs. Applying this whimsical fancy to his work, Takayanagi resolved to always be one step ahead and have the technology ready when the opportunity to apply it came within reach. Hamamatsu Photonics carries on this spirit today, constantly striving to be ready and waiting when opportunity arises.
Left : Professor Kenjiro Takayanagi
Professor Kenjiro Takayanagi (1899 -1990) was born in Hamamatsu, and after graduating from a teachers' college, became an assistant instructor at Hamamatsu Industrial High School (now the School of Engineering of Shizuoka University). At that time, he was engaged in television research. Heihachiro Horiuchi, the founder of Hamamatsu Photonics, was at that time a student in Professor Takayanagi's seminar, and became fascinated by the professor's television technology, absorbing his passion for the realm of the unexplored.
Right : In 1926, Professor Takayanagi's research team succeeded in producing a Japanese character on the world's first electronic television screen. (The photograph shows a device reproducing the character in the Hamamatsu Science Museum.)
On the advent of the era of light
A single Japanese character paves the way to the television age. (1926) |
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It has been around 80 years since Kenjiro Takayanagi first succeeded in displaying a Japanese character on a television screen. In that time, such remarkable advances have been made in photonics technology that this period in history is being called the "century of light". Hamamatsu Photonics has kept pace with the advances of photonics technology. |
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