Toshiba

Toshiba (東芝) is a high technology electrical and electronics manufacturing firm, headquartered in Japan. It is the 7th largest integrated manufacturer of electric and electronic equipment in the world.

In financial year 2000-01 the company generated sales of ¥ 5,951,357 million and net income of ¥ 96,168 million. The company employs 188,042 people (2001).

The company was founded in 1939 by the merger of Hisashige Tanaka[?]'s electrical firm Shibaura Seisaku-sho and the consumer goods company Tokyo Denki. The new company was called Tokyo Shibaura Denki. It was soon nicknamed Toshiba, which became the official name in 1978 as Toshiba Corporation.

The group expanded strongly, both by internal growth and by acquisitions, buying heavy engineering and primary industry firms in the 1940s and 1950s and then spinning off subsidiaries in the 1970s and beyond, groups created include Toshiba EMI (1960), Toshiba Electrical Equipment (1974), Toshiba Chemical (1974), Toshiba Lighting and Technology (1989) and Toshiba Carrier Corpoaration (1999).

The company was responsible for a number of Japanese firsts, including radar (1942), the TAC digital computer (1954), transistor television and microwave oven (1959), color video phone (1971), Japanese word processor (1978), MRI system (1982), laptop personal computer (1986), NAND EEPROM (1991), DVD (1995), and the Libretto sub-notebook personal computer (1996).

The first Kanji, to, means "east", and the last, shiba, is a magical and powerful plant in East Asian mythology[?] that offers longevity filled with good lucks.

External links

• Worldwide portal (http://www.toshiba.co.jp/worldwide/)
• Japan site (http://www.toshiba.co.jp)
• USA site (http://www.toshiba.com)