was a Japanese engineer and founder of Nakamichi Corporation, a high-end

audio Audio most commonly refers to sound, as it is transmitted in signal form. It may also refer to: Sound *Audio signal, an electrical representation of sound *Audio frequency, a frequency in the audio spectrum *Digital audio, representation of sound ...

electronics The field of electronics is a branch of physics and electrical engineering that deals with the emission, behaviour and effects of electrons using electronic devices. Electronics uses active devices to control electron flow by amplification ...

company based in

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

. The company is most famous for its very high quality sounding cassette decks.

Nakamichi's life

Etsuro Nakamichi founded Nakamichi Research in 1948. The brother of

Niro Nakamichi Niro may refer to: *Niro (rapper), French rapper *Niro Group, originally A/S Niro Atomizer, Danish company acquired by GEA Process Engineering *Kia Niro The Kia Niro ( ko, 기아 니로) is a compact crossover SUV (C-segment) manufactured by ...

, he was an acoustic engineering officer in the

Imperial Japanese Navy The Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN; Kyūjitai: Shinjitai: ' 'Navy of the Greater Japanese Empire', or ''Nippon Kaigun'', 'Japanese Navy') was the navy of the Empire of Japan from 1868 to 1945, when it was dissolved following Japan's surrender ...

doing sonar research. After the war, he started Nakamichi Research by researching in electromagnetism, magnetic recording, acoustics and communications. The company he founded initially designed and developed portable radios, tone arms, speakers and communications equipment. With the development of magnetic tape in 1951, Nakamichi felt his company could develop and refine the technology of recording heads. Within a few years his company developed an open-reel tape recorder, and in 1957 the Japanese public was introduced to an open reel recorder under the FIDELA brand name. The company he founded subsequently went on to develop some of the world's best

cassette deck A cassette deck is a type of tape machine for playing and recording audio cassettes that does not have a built-in power amplifier or speakers, and serves primarily as a transport. It can be a part of an automotive entertainment system, a part of a ...

s, including the world's first 3-head cassette deck. At one point in the mid 1960s the company manufactured tape decks for a number of foreign companies including

Ampex Ampex is an American electronics company founded in 1944 by Alexander M. Poniatoff as a spin-off of Dalmo-Victor. The name AMPEX is a portmanteau, created by its founder, which stands for Alexander M. Poniatoff Excellence.AbramsoThe History ...

Harman Kardon Harman Kardon (stylized as ) is a division of US-based Harman International Industries, a subsidiary of Samsung Electronics, and manufactures home and car audio equipment. Harman Kardon was originally founded in 1953 by business partners, Sid ...

and

Motorola Motorola, Inc. () was an American Multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, United States. After having lost $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009, the company split into two independent p ...

. His company was also the first to license

Dolby-B Noise Reduction A Dolby noise-reduction system, or Dolby NR, is one of a series of noise reduction systems developed by Dolby Laboratories for use in analog audio tape recording. The first was '' Dolby A'', a professional broadband noise reduction sy ...

from

Dolby Laboratories Dolby Laboratories, Inc. (often shortened to Dolby Labs and known simply as Dolby) is an American company specializing in Noise reduction#In audio, audio noise reduction, Audio data compression, audio encoding/compression, spatial audio, and ...

in 1969 as well as

High-Com II The High Com (also as HIGH COM, both written with a thin space) noise reduction system was developed by Telefunken, Germany, in the 1970s as a high quality high compression analogue compander for audio recordings. High Com ...

from

Telefunken Telefunken was a German radio and television apparatus company, founded in Berlin in 1903, as a joint venture of Siemens & Halske and the ''Allgemeine Elektrizitäts-Gesellschaft'' (AEG) ('General electricity company'). The name "Telefunken" app ...

in 1977.

Etsuro Nakamichi Foundation

Shortly after Etsuro's passing, a foundation was made in his name. The Foundation was dedicated to the promotion and encouragement of baroque and other fine forms of classical music, in accordance with Etsuro's will.

Takeshi Nakamichi

Etsuro's only son joined Nakamichi Corporation in April 1972. Takeshi is currently the President / Representative Director of Nakamichi Corporation.

Niro Nakamichi

After Etsuro Nakamichi founded

Nakamichi is a Japanese consumer electronics brand that originated in Japan and gained a name from the 1970s onwards for innovative and high quality audio cassette decks. Nakamichi is a subsidiary of Chinese holding company Nimble Holdings. Nakamich ...

, his brother Niro joined and the two brothers worked to develop the company. In 2001, , designer of many of the historic tape decks, started a new company, Mechanical Research Corporation, which introduced ultra high end audio amplifiers, preamplifiers, and an integrated amplifier, called "engines". The products featured innovative designs and addressed issues of mechanical isolation, as well as presenting a unique appearance. Soon thereafter, however, the "engine" products were no longer promoted and a line of home theater products was introduced. The company was renamed Niro Corporation.

References

External links

Nakamichi Corporate History MilestonesEtsuro Nakamichi FoundationNiro Products from Niro Nakamichi

{{DEFAULTSORT:Nakamichi, Etsuro Japanese businesspeople 1982 deaths Year of birth missing