Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!

Tokuji Hayakawa opened a small metal workshop in Tokyo in 1912, invented the Tokubijo snap buckle, and in 1915 created the Ever-Ready Sharp mechanical pencil, whose name would later become his company’s. The 1923 Great Kanto earthquake destroyed his factory and took his family. He moved to Osaka in 1924, founded Hayakawa Metal Works, and by 1925 was selling the first generation of Japanese commercial radio sets. The company became Hayakawa Electric Industry in 1942 and produced the first Japan-made television sets in 1953. In 1964 it released the world’s first all-transistor calculator, the size of a cash register and priced at $1,400, followed by an IC calculator in 1966 and a pocketable LSI model under $300 in 1969. It took the name Sharp Corporation in 1970.

In 1973 Sharp released the first calculator with a liquid crystal display. It built Twin Famicom systems and TVs with built-in Nintendo consoles, sold 80,000 low-priced fax machines in the U.S. in their first year in 1984, sponsored Manchester United from 1983 to 2000, introduced a wall-mountable TV in 1992 and launched the J-SH04, the first commercial camera phone, in 2000. Billions spent on LCD plants at Kameyama and Sakai then collided with the 2008 financial crisis, a strong yen and the end of Japan’s digital TV subsidies, and in 2012, its 100th year, Sharp lost $4.7 billion. It paid a $120 million U.S. criminal fine in an LCD price-fixing case, sold its Americas brand rights and Mexican TV factory to Hisense for $23.7 million in 2015, and sued Hisense in 2017 over damage to the brand, which Hisense denied. In 2016 Foxconn bought a 66 percent stake for $3.5 billion.

• Sharp’s microwave oven with a turntable, introduced between 1964 and 1966, dragged food through the hot spots of standing waves so it cooked evenly.
• The Sakai plant was for a time the only 10th-generation LCD factory in the world, built for AQUOS panels of 60 inches and larger.
• Greenpeace’s 2011 electronics guide praised Sharp’s TV energy efficiency but faulted its supply chain chemical management and conflict mineral sourcing.
• In 2013 Sharp set a solar cell efficiency record of 44.4 percent, and in 2015 it launched the RoBoHoN robot phone and a $133,000 8K television.
• Sharp dropped its Hisense suit in 2018, regained its U.S. brand rights in 2019, and used its TV clean rooms to make surgical masks in 2020.