Browse items donated to the National Museum of History and Technology by the Sony Corporation through its president Akio Morita in 1974. Smithsonian Libraries and Archives ‘Pathways’ Fellow Yasmin Mohaideen has aggregated collection items from the donation, below.
The Sony Corporation and the Smithsonian Institution circa 1973-74
The work of the Audiovisual Media Preservation Initiative in migrating legacy magnetic videotape recordings to digital files relies heavily on good, functioning playback machinery. Calibrated decks ensure accurate playback of the magnetically-encoded recorded video signal and without machines to playback tapes, content will be lost. A large majority of these crucial machines in our day-to-day transfer activities—also known as, “VTRs” (videotape recorders)—were originally manufactured by the Sony Corporation.
Sony President Akio Morita's 1973 Doubleday Lecture
In November 1973, Sony Corporation president Akio Morita presented a speech for the Doubleday Lectures at the National Museum of History and Technology (NMHT). Conceived by historian, NMHT director (and future Librarian of Congress), Daniel Boorstin, the Frank Nelson Doubleday Lectures began in 1972 as a series of speakers who “contributed measurably to the advancement of at least one of our frontiers of knowledge.”
AVMPI's Audio Preservation Specialist Dan Hockstein recently digitized a 1/4" open reel audiotape recording of Morita's lecture, from SI Archives Record Unit 335, Box 3, which is currently being post-processed.
Early in 1974, Akio Morita returned to NMHT to donate an array of Sony Corporation hardware for the collections of the museum. A recording of the donation ceremony can be found in SI Archives Record Unit 360, Box 17, and AVMPI recently digitized the 1/4" audiotape. NMHT director Brooke Hindle can be heard introducing Morita in the recording, which begins around 01:30 of the link below.
Sony Corporation Donation 1974
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Sony model PV100 video tape recorder
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Transistor radio
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Sony type C38 condenser microphone
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Sony model EM-1 tape recorder
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Sony "Trinitron" model KV 1310 color television receiver
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Transistor television
- Sony model EFM-17J transistor radio
- Sony model CV-2000 video recorder
- Sony type 2T51 transistor
- Sony type 2T12 transistor
- Sony Esaki-type 1F13 tunneling diode
- Sony Esaki-type 1T1104 tunneling diode
Background from Curator Hal Wallace, NMAH
AVMPI's Curator of Audiovisual Media Walter Forsberg recently caught up with NMAH's Work and Industry curator Hal Wallace to ask about more about Morita and Sony’s importance in the history of electronics manufacturing.
Walter Forsberg: What kind of broader implications did the shift from vacuum tubes to transistors have on the electronics industry?
Hal Wallace: Transistor radios have a way cool back story. In the aftermath of World War II, researchers at Bell Telephone Laboratories invented a small device to manipulate the flow of electrons in a circuit: a transistor. Radio designers quickly began adopting transistors to replace fragile, battery-draining vacuum tubes in their products. Idea Inc. introduced a pocket-sized transistor radio called the Regency TR-1 in time for the 1954 Christmas shopping season. A prototype of that radio forms part of our radio collections here at the museum.
Regency model TR-1 transistor radio engineering prototype
Object Details
- Date made
- 1954
- maker
- Texas Instruments
- Location
- Currently not on view
- See more items in
- Work and Industry: Electricity
- Credit Line
- from Texas Instruments
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
- ID Number
- 1987.0487.265
- accession number
- 1987.0487
- catalog number
- 1987.0487.265
- collector/donor number
- G00107
- Object Name
- radio receiver
- Receiver, Transistorized
- Other Terms
- Receiver, Transistorized; Solid State; Microelectronics
- Measurements
- overall: 4 7/8 in x 3 1/8 in x 1 3/4 in; 12.3825 cm x 7.9375 cm x 4.445 cm
- Record ID
- nmah_689503
Walter Forsberg: Where would you locate Sony's importance in this history?
Hal Wallace: Japanese companies like Sony needed to rebuild plants destroyed during the war, so they adopted transistors for a host of products that came off new assembly lines. As Morita noted, Japanese companies that used to be known for making low-quality imitation products were determined to compete in global markets with high-quality, leading-edge electronic devices. This had a major impact on the consumer electronics industry from the 1960s on. They succeeded in part by incorporating the work of Japanese scientists like Leo Esaki, who designed a new type of transistor for which he won a Nobel Prize in 1973.
Walter Forsberg: I recall my parents both relating how important transistor radios were to their youth in the late-1950s...
Hall Wallace: You could say that two revolutions began in 1954. Transistor radios were introduced in the US, and Algerians began an eight-year war for independence from France. Easily hidden and battery-powered, transistor radios became a critical tool for the Algerians. Try as they might, French authorities found it nearly impossible to control distribution of these radios. Many Algerians, previously reluctant to listen to radio programs for cultural and political reasons, now embraced the technology.
As Adolfo Gilly wrote in his 1965 introduction to Frantz Fanon's A Dying Colonialism: “The transistor radio has been transformed into a revolutionary implement as powerful as the gun.”
Walter Forsberg: Are all of these Sony collections objects still at the museum, including the Esaki diodes?
Hal Wallace: Yes they're mostly here at NMAH. Unfortunately it appears that the model EFM-17J transistor radio 334919 was stolen back in 1986 (along with other objects) while in transit to a loan. That's one I expect we'll never see again. Sigh.
Several Polaroid photographs of that event survive and were shared thanks to curator Hal Wallace. Akio Morita can be seen with white hair in a grey suit, shaking hands with donation ceremony attendees (curator Elliot Sivowitch in blue, at top, and NMAH's then-director Brooke Hindle, at bottom).
