16) Kobe Kogyo, the first to start production of transistors

16) Kobe Kogyo, the First to Start Production of Transistors

 
Point contact transistor unveiled by Kobe Kogyo

The name of the company who first manufactured and sold transistors to outside of the company in Japan is Kobe Kogyo who was acquired by Fujitsu later.
Kobe Kogyo held a reception in January, 1954 at Ueno Seiyoken in Tokyo, where they showed a prototype of a radio to public which used point-contact transistors made by themselves. They launched the transistors into market in February, right after the reception event. The price was as high as 3000~4000 yen per piece, which was then equivalent to average managing director's monthly salary.
Tetsuya Arizumi who was Senior Manager of vacuum tube department in the company at that time, took a lead of the development of transistor in Kobe Kogyo. He thought, "It looks interesting," and started the work as his private project, not notifying the company. He visited US in 1951 which was the year of San Francisco Peace Treaty, and he inspected the sites of transistor manufacturing by himself at Bell Telephone Laboratories and at RCA Laboratory as well. He took and sent memos with sketches about manufacturing process and equipment to his team in Japan. Leo Esaki who won Nobel Prize later was a member of his team, fresh out of school.
Arizumi wrote an article to celebrate Esaki’s winning of Nobel Prize for a Japanese electronics magazine ‘Desnhi Zairyo’, of which I was a chief editor. He wrote with an attached photo, "The photograph is the first PNP transistor made in Japan in the spring to summer of 1953 which I believe you would remember nostalgically" and "The lead wire is quite thick and long, and the total structure obviously lacks in consideration for good thermal design." His team was one step ahead in the development of PNP junction type transistor as well. Later, Arizumi became a professor of Nagoya University and contributed to the development in solid state device research in Japan.
(By courtesy of Tetsuya Arizumi)

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