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December 13, 1965 Electronics
 [Table of Contents]
Wax nostalgic about and learn from the history of early electronics.
See articles from Electronics,
published 1930 - 1988. All copyrights hereby acknowledged.
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Here is an editorial excerpt
from a 1965 issue of Electronics magazine that could be from a contemporary
news publication: "If U. S. manufacturers continue to abandon their engineering
and production for Japanese products, they are headed for oblivion because they
cannot compete with the purely merchandising organizations such as Sears, Roebuck &
Co. and Montgomery Ward* which buy Japanese products too." Of course you could easily
substitute South Korea, China, Taiwan, or any other now-prominent technology company
in place of Japan. American economic "experts" assured us in the 1990s that we no
longer needed to manufacture anything; rather, we would become a service and retail
economy. That worked out real well, eh? What we really became was dependent on the
rest of the world for our goods, and were forced to surrender intellectual property
(IP), erstwhile closely guarded national defense secrets (handing over ICBM guidance
systems, high precision CNC machinery, semiconductor processing equipment, etc.)
for the privilege of establishing business operations in those countries. This edition
of Electronics is dedicated to reporting on the amazing ingenuity and determination
of the Japanese people in their efforts to not just revive their industry based
in the post-war (WWII) era, but to wisely rebuild with the most modern technology
available.
* The latter is now defunct, and the former soon will be.
BTW, does anyone know what the English translation of the Japanese characters
in the picture is? Google translator can't figure it out. I took a guess at "japan
technology" and got: 日本の技術 , which looks very
close.
All these articles appeared in this issue: Westernizing Japan
| Japanese Technology - The New Push for Technical Leadership
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Japanese Technology - When You're Second, You Try Harder |
Japan Stresses Research |
Japan: An Industrious Competitor
Westernizing Japan
 Japanese developments in electronics are moving
almost as fast as the trains on the new Tokaido line, the railroad the Japanese
are so proud of because it is the world's fastest. They still lag behind the United
States, as most Japanese will frankly admit, but they are racing to catch up. That's
the really significant inference of our special report on Japanese electronics (pp.
77-112).
After reading Yasuo Tarui's survey of integrated circuit activity (p. 90), it's
hard to believe the first development started only 18 months ago. And this without
benefit of a gigantic military or space program to subsidize the work. One of the
biggest government research projects supporting integrated circuit activity is for
$80,000, a sum puny by U. S. standards. Yet six companies are sharing in the award
to develop six different IC equipments.
Semiconductor production is the nucleus of Japan's electronics industry. Takuya
Kojima and Makoto Watanabe have surveyed not only some unusual Japanese devices
but how some of their associates use components in circuits (pp. 81-87). While the
technology may not be impressive to a student of advanced semiconductor phenomena,
nearly every U. S. consumer-products company uses Japanese devices - an impressive
fact.
In solid state microwave technology, Japan may well be on a par with the United
States. Its terrain and economy have encouraged use of wireless communication instead
of coaxial lines so that Japan today has the densest network in the world, as Isoa
Someya reports on page 99. Solid state systems save installation and construction
costs, keenly important in a country whose resources are sharply limited.
Because the Japanese desire greatly to be considered an advanced people, they
tend to take a gamble on the new even before it is proven. This has been particularly
true in industrial plants, many of which were destroyed during World War II. Rebuilding
from scratch during the post war boom, which accelerated sharply from 1960 to 1964,
many manufacturers installed industrial electronics instead of conventional electrical
or mechanical controls. Japanese companies have shown far more willingness to change
to electronics than their counterparts in U. S. industry. Today, even in the face
of a recession, Japanese industry is buying more numerically controlled machine
tools (p. 106) and computers for process control (110) than ever before.
Progress has created a demand for a lot of new products too: radio, television
and tape recorders. Now the fads are air conditioners central heating and hot water
heaters. At Sanyo Electric Co. Ltd., a major appliance manufacturer, executive managing
director Kaoru Iue explains the pressure: "In the summer, the average Japanese has
always come home after work, taken off his clothes and sat nude in front of a fan
to keep cool. Thousands of Japanese who have traveled to the U. S., now believe
that is no way for an advanced people to behave - so they want air conditioning.
In the same way, Japanese housewives have learned the desirability of having hot
water in the morning, after centuries of doing all the morning chores in cold water."
All this activity and dynamism in Japan poses a considerable threat to the U.
S. electronics industry, clearly the world's leader. The Japanese are particularly
attuned to the infant markets of Asia and Africa and have serious designs on maturing
markets in Europe. For several years. now, they have been raising havoc in certain
parts of the U. S. electronics market.
But the most serious threat to U. S. electronics firms may be something the Americans
are doing themselves. Manufacturer after manufacturer is buying Japanese consumer
products with the U. S. company's nameplate riveted on at the end of the production
line. If U. S. manufacturers continue to abandon their engineering and production
for Japanese products, they are headed for oblivion because they cannot compete
with the purely merchandising organizations such as Sears, Roebuck & Co. and
Montgomery Ward which buy Japanese products too. These merchandisers own outlets
through which they can retail the Japanese products; the manufacturers must resell
the goods to independent retailers who then have to compete in price with the Montgomery
Wards and Sears stores.
The two things the Japanese fear most are the fast rate of development of U.
S. technology and U. S. automation. To offset the phenomenal progress the Japanese
are making, U. S. companies will have to pour more effort and money into product
development and automation of production facilities. This is no time for American
companies to be complacent.
Posted August 23, 2023
(updated from original
post on 8/6/2018)
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