was the first company established by

Tanaka Hisashige was a Japanese rangaku scholar, engineer and inventor during the Bakumatsu and early Meiji period in Japan. In 1875, he founded what became the Toshiba Corporation. He has been called the "Thomas Edison of Japan" or "Karakuri Giemon." Biograp ...

, one of the most original and productive inventor-

engineers Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the limit ...

during the Tokugawa /

Edo period The or is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional '' daimyo''. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was characteriz ...

Overview

Established in July 1875, it was the first Japanese company to manufacture

telegraph Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas p ...

equipment. It also manufactured switches, and miscellaneous electrical and communications equipment. The company was inherited by Tanaka's adopted son, and later became half of the present

Toshiba , commonly known as Toshiba and stylized as TOSHIBA, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. Its diversified products and services include power, industrial and social infrastructure system ...

company. Several people who worked at Tanaka Seisakusho or who received Tanaka's guidance at a Kubusho (Ministry of Industries) factory later became pioneers themselves. These included Miyoshi Shōichi who helped Fujioka make the first power generator in Japan and to establish a company,

Hakunetsusha was a company established by Shōichi Miyoshi and Fujioka Ichisuke, two of Japan's industrial pioneers during the Tokugawa / Edo period. It specialized in the manufacture of light bulbs. The company was established in 1890, and started out by s ...

to make bulbs;

Oki Kibatarō was an engineer formerly employed at a Japanese Ministry of Industry (Japan), Ministry of Industry (''Kōbushō'') factory. In 1877, only a year after Alexander Graham Bell's invention, ''Kōbushō'' had started an effort to make telephone rece ...

, the founder of the present Oki Denki (

Oki Electric Industry , commonly referred to as OKI, OKI Electric or the OKI Group, is a Japanese information and communications technology company, headquartered in Toranomon, Minato-ku, Tokyo and operating in over 120 countries around the world. OKI produced the fi ...

); and Ishiguro Keizaburō, a co-founder of the present

Anritsu is a Japanese multinational corporation in the telecommunications electronics equipment market. A global pioneer for producing the world's first wireless telephone network, Anritsu's revenue numbers near US$782 million. History In Japan, Anri ...

. After the demise of the founder in 1881 Tanaka Seisakusho became partly owned by

General Electric General Electric Company (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, and incorporated in New York state and headquartered in Boston. The company operated in sectors including healthcare, aviation, power, renewable energ ...

and expanded into the production of

torpedoes A modern torpedo is an underwater ranged weapon launched above or below the water surface, self-propelled towards a target, and with an explosive warhead designed to detonate either on contact with or in proximity to the target. Historically, su ...

and mines at the request of 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 ...

, to become on the largest manufacturing companies of the time. However, as the Navy started to use competitive bids and then build its own works, the demand decreased substantially and the company started to lose money. The main creditor to the company,

Mitsui is one of the largest '' keiretsu'' in Japan and one of the largest corporate groups in the world. The major companies of the group include Mitsui & Co. ( general trading company), Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, Nippon Paper Industri ...

Bank, took over the insolvent company in 1893 and renamed it

Shibaura Seisakusho was the new name given to the company Tanaka Seisakusho (Tanaka Engineering Works), after it was declared insolvent in 1893 and taken over by Mitsui Bank. In 1910, it formed a tie-up with GE USA, which, in exchange for technology acquired about ...

(Shibaura Engineering Works).

External links

Official website

References

{{Toshiba Engineering companies based in Tokyo Electrical engineering companies of Japan Toshiba Japanese companies established in 1875 Imperial Japanese Navy