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The History of Canon

by Rich on October 29, 2008

Canon is known today for its printers, copiers, and cameras. It began in 1930 as a small company called Precision Optical Instruments Laboratory, started by Goro Yoshida and his brother-in-law, Saburo Uchida, to produce a 35-milimeter rangefinder camera—a camera with an adjustable focusing mechanism that could photograph far-away objects in sharp focus.

The company’s first camera was called the “Kwanon,” after the Japanese Bodhisattva Guan Yin, whose Japanese name was pronounced “Kannon” or “Kwannon.” Although the company marketed three versions of this camera and are said to have produced ten, none were ever known to have sold.

One of the biggest reasons for this is that while the company had produced a camera, it had not manufactured a lens.  The company partnered with another Japanese company, Japan Optical Industries—later known as Nikon—that was developing a lens under the name “Nikkor.”

The Kwanon was first advertised in the June 1934 issue of Asahi Camera, one of Japan’s top photography magazines then and today. The ad read, “The ‘I’ Class submarine. The ’92-Type’ airplane. The Kwanon camera. All world leaders.” The I-Class submarine and the 92-Type airplane were both cutting-edge developments that the Japanese government was touting as proof of Japan’s technical superiority.

Eventually, Uchida decided to change the company’s product name from “Kwanon” to “Canon,” which meant “precision” in Latin—a desirable trait in cameras. Thus, in 1936, the first camera released by Precision Optical Instruments Laboratory was the Hansa Canon. Three years later, the company began to manufacture its own lenses in-house.

In 1940, with the onset of World War II, the Japanese army came to several companies with a request to manufacture an X-ray camera. These companies turned to Precision Optical Instruments. Towards the end of 1940, the company had innovated and produced the world’s first X-ray cameras.

In 1945, part of the company’s manufacturing facilities were destroyed in Allied bombings—and the company ceased operations briefly after the end of the war. When Allied forces occupied the country, however, the company president noticed that they were interested in Japanese cameras.  He decided there was plenty of opportunity for the company to succeed, and he decided to reopen the company and invite back its former workers.

In 1947, the company’s name was changed to Canon Camera Company, partly to appeal to the Allied forces and partly as a result of its first public offering on the Japanese stock exchange. Western customers found the name “Canon” more appealing and easy to remember, and the script used to write the name was unique among Japanese companies at the time. Because of this, the name stood out on the stock exchange and in the market.

In the 1970’s, a rivalry had begun to develop between former partners Canon and Nikon as to who produced the better professional camera.  The Canon F1 and the Nikon F2 both had devotees and their own system of photography. Eventually, Nikon began to win out with newspaper photographers and Canon cemented its hold on the wildlife photography market.

In 1976, Canon introduced the first camera with a microcomputer embedded inside—the Canon AE-1. “AE” stood for “Automatic Exposure.” This camera allowed amateur photographers to take professional-quality pictures without paying high prices for professional cameras.  With this innovation and the AF35M auto-focus compact camera developed in 1979, Canon became the brand of choice for amateur photographers.

Canon began with cameras and eventually expanded into personal copying machines, color copy machines, and then inkjet and laser printers.  Today, while it’s a household name for printers as well as cameras, the company makes most of its revenue from all-in-one machines, digital and analog copiers and scanners typically used in offices. It also manufactures flat-panel televisions in collaboration with Toshiba.

One of Canon’s important printer innovations was the bubble-jet printer. According to company lore, a technician accidentally touched the tip of a hot solder gun to a needle filled with ink. The heat caused the ink to spray out of the needle.  This fortunate accident led to the development of the first bubble-jet printers in 1981. Canon also played an integral role in developing laser printer technology and liquid crystal displays.

Canon is a groundbreaking company, responsible for driving innovation in camera and printer technology throughout the 20th century.  With its long history of invention and its reputation in the market, chances are it will continue to be influential in the 21st.

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The History of Hewlett Packard

by Rich on October 22, 2008

Hewlett Packard was founded by Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard in 1939. Classmates at Stanford University, the two started their business in a garage in Palo Alto under the mentorship of a professor, Frederick Terman. Their first product was an audio oscillator used by sound engineers.  It was bought by Disney to develop their innovative Fantasound sound system installed in movie theatres for Fantasia.

In the first decade of its existence, Hewlett Packard developed products for a wide variety of industries—from agriculture to electronics.  Eventually, they honed their focus on electronic testing and measurement devices. These included oscillators, voltmeters, signal generators, wave analyzers, and other equipment, known for being more precise and sturdy than competitors’ devices.

The founders, Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, were known for an open management style later dubbed “management by walking around” that highlights personal involvement and high levels of autonomy allowed to individual workers. HP became known for setting objectives and allowing workers to develop their own practices for meeting those goals.  They were also innovative in their “open door” management policy, creating managerial offices without doors to encourage communication with employees.

HP continued to produce and depend on measurement devices up until the 1990’s. In the 1960’s, they made their first foray into computers—by developing them for internal use. They started out buying microcomputing devices for its measurement instruments from Digital Equipment Corporation, but eventually decided that it would be more cost-effective to make the equipment they needed in-house.  This led to the production of the HP 2100 and 1000 microcomputer series, which were sold commercially for over 20 years.

Hewlett Packard was one of the first to experiment with flex-time in one of its plants in Germany, where employees could come in late or leave early as long as they worked a set number of hours.  In 1973, the company expanded the policy to apply at all of their facilities.

The company is widely acknowledged to have produced the first personal computer, the Hewlett Packard 3000, in 1968. Because it didn’t bear any resemblance to an IBM computer, HP’s marketing department decided to advertise it as a desktop calculator instead of a computer—so that detractors would not compare the two.  The later 9100A was advertised as a “personal computer”—one of the first uses of the term.

Steve Wozniak, one of Apple’s co-founders, first designed the Apple 1 computer while an employee at HP.  He was under a contract of first refusal with the company, and had to offer the computer to them.  The company turned it down, preferring to focus on scientific and industrial markets rather than personal computing.

In the 1980’s, Hewlett Packard developed its first inkjet and laser printers for the consumer market.  It also introduced all-in-one products that included printing, scanning, fax, and other capabilities, and these proved to be popular with both businesses and individuals.

The company changed direction in the 1990’s to target individual consumers instead of business and industrial markets. They expanded their line of computer products and peripherals, and spun all unrelated enterprises off into Agilent, a new subsidiary.  It was an $8 billion company with over 30,000 employees, and it was also the largest public offering in the history of Silicon Valley.

HP has had a series of firsts as a company, including many innovations in hand-held calculators, the first light-emitting diodes (LED’s), and the first personal computer. They were also the first company listed in the Dow Jones Industrial Average to appoint a woman as CEO. In 1999, the company tapped Carly Fiorina for the top spot.  She championed HP’s successful merger with Compaq, often meeting with resistance from HP’s managerial board and clashing with Warren Hewlett, son of the founder.  She stayed in the position until 2005.

Compaq was a developer of personal computers, and the merger gave Hewlett Packard an expanded product line in this area.  It enabled the company to lay claim to a larger market share in the personal computing industry.  Today, HP’s computers are sold under both HP and Compaq’s brand names.

In the 1980’s, the basement where HP started was named a historic location.  HP’s innovations changed the face of the computer and electronics industries, and they are now one of the largest companies in the industry. With their long history of success and influence on computing technology, it is likely that they will continue to innovate for many years to come.

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