Japanese Trade-Name Directory
August 1969 Electronics World

August 1969 Electronics World   Table of Contents  Wax nostalgic about and learn from the history of early electronics. See articles from Electronics World, published May 1959 - December 1971. All copyrights hereby acknowledged.

The January 1969 issue of Electronics World magazine published an extensive list of Japanese company trade names and their addresses. Many of them went out of business or were bought by other corporations long ago, as occurs in all countries. I OCRed the company names, but didn't bother with the addresses. You will see that "Craig" is listed twice, which appears to be a typo where the first one should have been "Cardinal." "Aiwa" is also listed twice, but that might have been a legitimate duplication due to separate locations (BTW, I owned an Aiwa stereo at one time). Aiwa stereo equipment is now being serviced by Sony according to the Aiwa.com website. My first "real" cassette tape deck was made by TEAC (founded in 1953 as the Tokyo Electro Acoustic Company) and my first "real" stereo receiver was made by Sansui. Japan definitely Pioneer-ed (pun intended) some really good stereo equipment. I remember the line in "Back to the Future 3" where Doc Brown, back in 1858 (where he time-travelled from 1955), makes a disparaging remark about a circuit in the DeLorean (back from the future - 1985) failing because of it being labeled "Made in Japan." Marty counters, "Waddaya mean Doc? All the best stuff's made in Japan."

Here's the Back to the Future timeline.

Japanese Trade-Name Directory

A listing* of the most popular Japanese transistor radios and hi-fi equipment, along with the addresses of U.S. representatives offering sales and servicing.

AGS Akai Aircastle Airline Aiwa Aiwa Ambassador AMD Astrotone Autosonic Aztec Bradford Brenell Cipher Coronet Craig (Cardinal?) Craig Crown Delmonico Dempa1 Denon Ebner Electra Electrophonic Essex Everplay Fleetwood Globe Granada Highwave Hitachi Jade, Realtone JVC Kenwood Lloyds

Masterwork Mayfair Mercury Midland Mirandette Mitsubishi National Nivico Orion Panasonic Penncrest Pioneer Playtape Ranger Realistic Rembrandt Rhapsody Roberts Ross Sansui Sanyo Satellite Sharp Sony Standard Superex Supersonic Teac Technicorder Telmar Toshiba Truetone Unicord Viscount Vista Wilco

*For a more complete list of Japanese consumer electronic products, write Electronics Div., Japan Light Machinery Information Centre, 437 Fifth Ave., New York 10016.

1  Publishers of Japanese television schematic diagrams.

Back to the Future 3 - Made in Japan