Sony Corporation

The company was founded in 1946 by Masaru Ibuku and Akio Morita as Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo (Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering) and first used the name Sony in 1955 as a brand name for marketing its first transistor radio. In 1958, it was renamed the Sony Corporation. By 1970, Sony was established as one of the world’s leading and most innovative manufacturers of consumer electronic products. Sony is particularly known for its miniaturization of a range of electronic goods and for its modern, minimalist approach to design.

Sony entered the consumer electronics market with its launch in 1950 of the G-type tape recorder, the first commercially available Japanese model. A more significant early milestone was the acquisition of a license to produce transistors in 1954, the same year that the world’s first transistor radio was manufactured in the United States. A year later, Sony launched its first transistor radio, the TR-55. Sony’s great contribution to transistor production was to reduce the failure rate in the production process, thus reducing the costs. Sony’s predilection for miniaturization became evident in 1957 when it introduced the world’s first pocket-size transistor radio, the TR-63. The still smaller and lighter TR-610 pocket transistor radio of 1958 featured a hinged wire stand and came in a range of colors.

Maytag Corporation

Founded in Newton, Iowa, by F. L. Maytag in 1893, the Maytag Company began as a manufacturer of farm tools. The company’s sales pattern reflected the seasonal nature of farming, so Maytag looked for a new product line that would be less susceptible to fluctuations in demand. In 1907, Maytag produced its first washing machine, a manual model. Maytag soon began to develop a line of washing machines, launching its first electric washing machine in 1911 and, in 1915, a washer powered by gasoline for homes without electricity. By the mid-1920s, Maytag had a 20 percent share of the U.S. washing machine market.

After World War II, Maytag diversified into the production of other white goods (stoves, washing machines, and refrigerators). Although Maytag continued to have a healthy share of the washingmachine market, its strategy seems to have been based on gaining a reputation for reliability rather than innovation. Its first automatic washing machines hit the market in 1948, ten years after these machines first appeared. Five years later, it added automatic clothes dryers to its product line. Maytag was also slow to move into the dishwasher market, introducing its first countertop dishwashers in 1966. Maytag did achieve an industry first in 1985, with the introduction of a stacking washer and dryer.

Tea bag sales

Tea bag sales now dominate the market and offer improved blends and convenience, including “onecup” bags. Despite this, a restyled and electronically more sophisticated Teasmade remains in production today. Swan also produces a model where the kettle and pot are hidden behind a panel that can accommodate a family photograph. The U.S. Chef’s Choice Company also produces the TeaMate, an appliance that looks similar to a coffee percolator. Based on the samovar method, it steams the tealeaves and then introduces boiled water to create a concentrate that is blended with the rest of the water.

Kodak Today

Today, Eastman Kodak is a world leader in both consumer and specialist photographic products. It has won eight Oscars for its technical contributions to the movie industry and is dominant in the field of medical laser imaging. The company’s involvement in the development of plastics for photographic film, film containers, and camera bodies resulted in sideways expansion into the fields of synthetic fibers, coal-based industrial chemicals, and general plastics. In the 1990s, Eastman Kodak decided to concentrate on its core businesses and divested itself of peripheral interests by selling off the Eastman Chemical Company and its pharmaceutical businesses. In spite of growing competition from Japanese companies since the 1950s, Eastman Kodak has been able to maintain a healthy share of the camera and film markets in the United States and overseas. The one notable exception has been Japan. In 1995, the company petitioned the U.S. government to take action against anticompetitive trade practices in the Japanese photographic film market. Two years later, the U.S. government responded by filing the case with the World Trade Organization, as yet unresolved.

Tea Makers

Given the British preference for a cup of tea with breakfast, it is hardly surprising that automatic tea makers appeared there. The earliest example was patented by Frank Clarke, a Birmingham gunsmith, in 1902. It operated through springs and levers connected to an alarm clock. When set it would ignite a match by running it across emery paper, thus lighting a spirit lamp that would heat the kettle above it.

The Goblin Company, which was well known for its vacuum cleaners, produced the first electric machine in 1933, the Goblin Teasmade. Designed by Brenner Thornton, it was also linked to an alarm clock but had a special kettle that could be set to boil before the alarm went off. The boiling water decanted into the teapot, which sat on a stand.

The weight of the water slightly tipped the teapot, engaging a switch that lit a bedside lamp attached to the machine. Despite folktales of scalded sleepers who had forgotten to replace the teapot, the Teasmade gradually became relatively popular.

Meanwhile, the tea bag was introduced in America. Designed by Thomas Sullivan in New York, its intended use was for sampling tea. It went into commercial production for caterers and had become a popular domestic item by the 1930s. The New York–based Tetley introduced tea bags into Britain in 1953.

Refrigerators

A refrigerator is an artificially cooled cabinet for storage of perishable foods. Cooling occurs when the refrigerant, preferably a substance with a low boiling point, is forced to change from a liquid to a gas by the application of pressure or heat. As the liquid evaporates, it draws heat from its surroundings, thus chilling food. The gas is then caused to reliquify either by being passed outside the

cabinet to a condenser, where it is able to expand and give off heat to the surrounding air, or by gravity. This cycle operates continuously. The basic principles of both methods of refrigeration— compression and (heat) absorption—were established in the nineteenth century and applied in commercial contexts such as brewing and shipment of meat. Refrigerators on a smaller scale, suitable for household use, did not appear until the early twentieth century.

Before domestic refrigerators became available, for many households the only way to keep food cool was by storing it in a naturally cool place, such as a cellar or a larder. A more effective method was to pack blocks of ice around food. Ice became more widespread as a commercial commodity in Europe, Canada, and the United States during the nineteenth century. By 1900, department stores were stocking ice boxes, which were well-insulated wooden cabinets with one compartment for ice, another for food, and a tray to collect water when the ice began to melt. 1930s Electrolux electric refrigerator, sold in Britain through the General Electric Company .

Record Players

Until the late nineteenth century, the only form of musical entertainment available in the home was live performance. While wealthy householders could afford to hire professional singers and musicians to provide entertainment at social gatherings, most people had to rely on their own musical abilities. The invention of the phonograph in 1877, followed by the gramophone in 1888, introduced recorded music to the home. Although a third of British homes had a gramophone by 1913, it was only after the advent of vinyl discs in the late 1940s that recorded music became a huge money earner.

RCA (Radio Corporation of America )

The Radio Corporation of America (RCA) was formed in 1919 to acquire the assets of the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of America. It was initially owned by corporate investors, including General Electric and Westinghouse, and became an independent company in 1932. Since 1988, RCA 1960s, to develop a videodisc format. Three rival video disc formats were announced in 1975, all play only and nonrecordable, and appeared on the market a few years later. RCA’s Selectavision system, launched in 1978, was competitively priced but unattractive to consumers in comparison with recordable videocassette systems. After five years, when it ceased Selectavision production, RCA had sold half a million players and 10 million discs, but had spent $300 million on research and development and lost approximately the same amount on production.

Perhaps not surprisingly, following the commercial disaster of Selectavision, RCA ceased to be an independent company in 1986 when it was taken over by General Electric. Less predictably, little more than a year later, General Electric sold off not only RCA, but also its own consumer electronics operations, to the French electronics multinational Thomson Grand Public. The enlarged company was renamed Thomson Consumer Electronics. Ironically, Thomson began life as the French subsidiary of the U.S. Thomson-Houston Electric Company, which merged with Edison Electric Light Company to form General Electric in 1892. This completed a series of prestigious acquisitions by Thomson in the 1980s, which include the German companies SABA and Telefunken and the British company Ferguson. Under new ownership, RCA began to flourish again. It reached a major milestone in 1989 when its 50 millionth color television set came off the assembly line at its plant in Bloomington, Indiana, which is the world’s largest television assembly plant.

In 1993, Thomson became a founding member of the Digital HDTV Grand Alliance, an international body formed to agree on global standards. A year later, the RCA Digital Satellite System introduced digital satellite television broadcasting in the United States. The parent company, Thomson Consumer Electronics, was renamed Thomson Multimedia in 1995 to signal its growing interest in digital home-entertainment products. Moreover, in 1998, it made equity holdings available to four companies that were considered to be suitable partners for new digital developments. These companies, with an aggregate 25 percent shareholding, are Microsoft, DirecTV, Alcatel, and NEC.

Razors

For over 200 years most Western men have, in accordance with the dictates of fashion, Gillette responded with its own version within a year. Wet razors have continued to market themselves on the concept of the close, refreshing shave. This has led to the introduction of dual and triple bladed shaving heads.

The 1980s saw the range of razors increase, with more models being introduced for women, most being battery operated and useable on wet or dry skin. They are consciously designed in pastel colors, as opposed to men’s razors, which usually have black plastic or aluminum cases. Most men’s razors are now cordless socket/battery combinations. The Philishave Cool Skin has electric blades and a cartridge for shaving gel, combining the features of wet and dry shaving.

Ice Crushers

Crushed ice became popular for cooling drinks and cocktails in the 1920s and 1930s. Simple ice crushers were usually hinged presses of cast aluminum. The upper handle had a head of spiked teeth that crushed the ice into the lower pan. Another version, popular in the 1950s, had a hopper above a set of hand-cranked teeth with a plastic container for the crushed ice to fall into below. Capable of producing coarse and fine granules, they can crush a quart of ice in two minutes. These models were available in reds and yellows with chromed lids. They are still on sale as retro kitchenware. Electrically operated models are also available.