Sony

Sony Corporation, "Sony" is a multinational corporation headquartered in Tokyo. Specializes in the production of home and professional electronics, game consoles and other high-tech products. In addition, Sony is one of the world's largest media conglomerates, owning the Sony Music Entertainment and EMI record labels, the Columbia Pictures and TriStar Pictures film studios, the entire MGM film archive (with Comcast), and also provides financial services.

Sony Corporation was founded by Akio Morita and Masaru Ibuka. At first it was called “Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo Kabushiki-Gaisha” (Tokyo Telecommunications and Industrial Company), but, as it quickly became clear, this name was difficult to pronounce for foreigners. The name "Sony" comes from a combination of lat. sonus (“sound”) and English. sunny boys (“sunny guys”; in Japanese it acquired the meaning “young geniuses”); In addition, Morita tried to find a word that does not exist in any language in the world. Since in Japanese the sounds "son-ni" resemble the word for unsuccessful business (literally: "to lose money"), it was decided to remove one of the letters n.

In 1950, Japan's first tape recorder was released. In the early 1950s, the company bought a license to manufacture transistors from Western Electric for $25,000 and in 1955 released its first “pocket” radio, the TR-63, which marked the beginning of the company’s success.

The company received the name Sony Corporation in 1958, at the same time its shares began to be listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, and since 1970 on the New York Stock Exchange. In 1960, trade missions were founded in the USA (New York) and Switzerland.

In 1979, the first prototype of the Walkman portable audio player appeared, which opened the page of personal audio for the whole world.

In 1983, Sony, together with Philips, launched the first compact discs on the market.