As tape recorder sales concentrated within the education sector, Ibuka looked for ideas to further expand Totsuko's market, traveling to the United States in March 1952. Never having traveled overseas, Ibuka was stunned at the sight of New York, a city packed with cars and lit up continuously throughout the night. With Shido Yamada* as his guide, Ibuka noticed that even in the States, consumer-grade tape recorders were not yet a common item.

Even amidst the constant stream of new ideas and inspirations he found in the United States however, one utterly unexpected lead came knocking on Ibuka's door: "Western Electric, home to the famous Bell Labs, is offering the rights for its newly invented transistor to prospective companies - do you want in?" Announced in 1948 by Bell Labs, Ibuka had actually discussed the device with Iwama at the time, but believing that the technology had no future applications, transistors were the last thing on Ibuka's mind when he had planned his trip to America. Besides, the rights would cost twenty-five thousand dollars (nine million yen at the time), a price tag far beyond what Totsuko could afford.

On the other hand, however, Totsuko's employees had increased significantly by then, and they had a body of new scientists fresh from college specializing in metallurgy, chemistry, mechanical engineering, and many other such fields. Wasn't the transistor the exact thing to focus their scientific expertise on and devote their efforts to developing? Ibuka was suddenly inspired. "Let's take on the transistor. This work will no doubt need a horde of engineers - researchers too.
Plus, everyone at Totsuko loves a new challenge. This is perfect," Ibuka thought.

By Ibuka's request, Yamada tried countless times to contact Western Electric about the offer, but getting an appointment was difficult. Entrusting the matter to Yamada, Ibuka had no choice but to return to Japan.

Immediately upon his return, Ibuka rushed to discuss the matter with Morita and Kasahara. Upon receiving their agreement, he quickly applied for permission to manufacture transistors from the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI, current day Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry). Their response, however, was negative: transistors were too advanced for a shabby weed-covered factory like Totsuko's to manufacture. From their perspective, the big corporations working on transistors, like Toshiba, Mitsubishi, and Hitachi, could only do so because they were receiving technological aid from the United States - for Totsuko to already buy the rights without any production knowledge was simply a fool's move.

Across the world in America, however, Yamada had been frequenting Western Electric's offices since Ibuka had departed, regaling them with Totsuko's story and gradually forming a business relationship with them. As a result, an envelope was soon brought to Ibuka containing Western Electric's agreement allowing Totsuko to use their rights to the transistor. Evidently Western Electric, impressed by Totsuko's ability to develop a magnetic tape recorder without any external assistance or resources, decided the transistor rights would be in good hands there.

Traveling to conduct his own survey of Europe and the United States, Morita was given the task of finalizing the contract with Western Electric when he departed in August of 1953. As this was Morita's first trip overseas, Morita journeyed to Western Electric together with Yamada, showed the evidence of their work on the magnetic tape recorder, and proved Totsuko's trustworthiness as a business.

• * Shido Yamada: Totsuko's representative in New York. Spending over thirty-five years in the United States, he contributed greatly to Totsuko's initial venture into the American market.

Agreeing to officially finalize the contract once MITI granted them permission, Morita left Western Electric with his provisionary signature. Vowing to gather as much literature on transistors as possible after he returned to Japan, Morita soon departed for Europe, having finished his job in the United States.

There, among all the places he visited, Morita was most moved by his visit to Eindhoven in the Netherlands. Seeing everyone riding their bikes through the small city and the rural landscapes gave Morita a profound sense of nostalgia - but what amazed Morita most of all was the size of the Philips headquarters located there. Despite the city's lack of an industrial foundation, this was where Dr. Philips had founded the Philips electronics empire.

"If Dr. Philips could do it, then there's no reason we can't. We surely have a shot at this," thought Morita, feeling all the more encouraged. "I'm feeling deeply inspirited by my visit to Philips. I am fully convinced that our company can expand our own products worldwide as well," he wrote in a letter to Ibuka.

Returning from his three-month trip abroad, Morita immediately began discussing with Ibuka exactly what to make with their newly acquired transistor technology. "Let's make a radio," Ibuka answered. "If we're going to bet on transistors, we have to make something that anyone anywhere can buy. That can only be radios. It'll be difficult, but let's start with radios."

Even in America, however, the only transistors that existed for consumer-grade products were low frequency types that could only be used for hearing aids and the like. To make a radio, a high frequency transistor needed to be developed first. But Ibuka was undeterred. "It'll be fine. We'll definitely be able to make what we need for a radio," he said. With those words, the engineers at Totsuko began their next challenge.

The company's top engineers immediately formed the Transistor Development Team, led by Production Manager Iwama, who was behind the development of the magnetic tape recorder, with skilled scientists from each other department at his side. Their first task was to start from basics and simply make a transistor - a steep first challenge given that Totsuko had neither the knowledge, nor even really any resources on transistors at all. Their sole lead was a book titled Transistor Technology that Morita had brought back from the United States. As the new year dawned upon them in 1954, Iwama too set out for the United States to study transistors.

The only knowledge Iwama had on transistors when he departed was what he managed to glean from reading Transistor Technology - in other words, only the basics on transistor manufacturing. He had to make the most of his trip to gather as much information as he could. Western Electric wouldn't just give him the blueprints for their transistors, but they did kindly allow him to take a look at their factory.
As he toured the facilities, he made sure to stop in front of anything he found important, pepper the guides with questions in his limited English, and condense his impressions and all the answers he received into several reports, which he promptly sent back to Tokyo. Since he was prohibited from drawing sketches of the machinery while inside the facility, Iwama would write down as much as he could of what he saw and heard after returning to his hotel room, from memory alone. Following his initial nine-page report was an eight-page report on Feb. 19, another nine pages on Feb. 21, five on April 7, five on April 9, eight on April 13, four on April 15...truly an astonishing amount.

Back in Tokyo, as Iwama's routine reports started coming in, the team set a goal to successfully construct a transistor by the time Iwama came back, using both his reports and Transistor Technology as their only guides.

The first step was to build a machine to actually manufacture the transistor itself. There were, of course, no machines for making semiconductors available to purchase back then, and Transistor Technology naturally did not include blueprints for the machines used to make transistors. There was simply no choice but to draw up the blueprints for such a machine themselves, part by part. Since Totsuko also lacked the requisite equipment, they outsourced portions of the manufacturing to other factories, slowly building up their equipment arsenal with a reducing apparatus used for reducing germanium oxide, a zone refiner used for purification, and a slicing machine. This last item, used to finely slice germanium crystals, was ultimately cobbled together from a diamond grindstone that Morita had acquired in the United States and a rusty old milling machine found at a tool shop.

Totsuko's first transistor oscillation was recorded one week before Iwama was set to return from the United States. The detector for measuring the oscillation was, of course, handmade. No one expected the first transistor to be completed this quickly. When the needle indicating the oscillation first began to swing, everyone, overjoyed, was at a loss for words.

Once Iwama had returned, the project moved from the basic research phase to finally attempting to produce transistors usable in radios. To do so, they had to create transistors capable of higher frequency transmission - for which they needed machines that could more precisely perform the crystal growing and lapping procedures that had, up until this point, been largely done by hand and human intuition. These machines, too, were custom-built.

By June, it had already become time to start prototyping a transistor radio. In October, the Tokyo Kaikan event hall exhibited Japan's first transistor and germanium diode.

Among all this commotion, some shocking and disappointing news suddenly came to Totsuko from America. The Regency transistor radio was announced as the world's first transistor radio towards the end of 1954, beginning sales during that year's Christmas season. Though there was certainly much disappointment at losing the race to become the world's first, this was also a chance for Totsuko to continue improving their transistors and circuit designs. The fruits of Totsuko's efforts came as early as January of the next year, when Totsuko's own transistor radio made its first sound. The prototype TR-52 was finally complete.

Morita was to travel overseas again in March 1955, continuing business talks and market surveys, but this time he was to bring the prototype radio as a product sample along with him. It was around this time that, as more people visited America, it became clear that "Totsuko" as a name would be hard to pronounce, which would certainly become a problem for the business in the future. The hunt for a good name - one that was short, easy to pronounce, and legible in any country's language - began.

Names using only two English letters were clunky, and names using three letters had largely already been taken by other companies. In Totsuko's own case, TKK would be shared with a Japanese railway company. This left a four-letter name as the next possibility. After much deliberation, the team arrived at a combination of the Latin word "sonus," the root for words like "sound" and "sonic," and the English word "sonny," representing both the company's small size and its cadre of young engineers and scientists: thus, "SONY" was born. Morita quickly picked up a version of the prototype with the "SONY" name attached and departed for the United States.

There, he was soon served a shocking proposal. A major American watch company made an offer to purchase one hundred thousand radios, under the condition that they would be sold under its own brand instead of "SONY." The offer's reasoning was clear: "Our company has over fifty years of history and reputation behind us. Using our brand is the right choice." Morita's instructions from Japan were to lock in the deal, but his mind was set. "Under no circumstances should we use their brand name. We spent all the effort to create our own 'SONY' name, and we should stand by our efforts. In any case, even if we accept the offer, our factories don't have the capacity to produce a hundred thousand units yet," he phoned back.
Morita then left the offer on the table with some parting words: "Right now, our company has just taken its first step towards the next fifty years of our own future. We'll make sure that in those fifty years, the 'SONY' name will become just as famous as yours." In that moment, instead of the money right in front of him, Morita chose to protect the newborn "SONY" brand.

Because of the TR-52's white grid-shaped case housing, it was nicknamed "the UN (United Nations) building" given their resemblance, but the radio began experiencing some sudden issues only a month after Morita returned. As the temperature continued to rise in May, the gridded housing on many TR-52s began to warp and bend away from the rest of the body. This spelled disaster for the product's viability, and plans for Totsuko's first TR-52 transistor radio's sale were soon scrapped as the team began researching for a more durable material. It was in September of that year when the redesigned TR-55, Japan's first transistor radio, was put to market.

After Totsuko's tenth anniversary in 1956, another revolutionary product was developed: the then-world's smallest transistor radio, the TR-63 "Pocketable Radio." Sales were to begin in March the following year.

The TR-63 was smaller than the previous smallest radio, the Regency TR-1, with greater sensitivity and sound output, while boasting less than half the battery consumption. At the time, radios small enough to fit in your pocket were already called "pocket radios" in the United States, and the "portable" label had already been used for both the TR-55 and TR-72, so Totsuko invented the "Pocketable" phrase to use in marketing the even smaller TR-63.

The Pocketable Radio made a reputation for itself soon after its release and quickly established a market for personal radios. Enabling people to listen to radio away from home, as they walked, or even while in the car, the TR-63 became an indispensable tool in people's lives.

The TR-63 was also Totsuko's first true foray into the export market with transistor radios. Sold abroad for $39.95, the TR-63 was also a massive hit overseas, with demand rising so high that shipments failed to keep up with year-end demand, forcing Totsuko to charter planes to deliver the radios to the United States by air.

One contributing factor to Totsuko's smooth transistor radio exports was a long-term contract that Morita had finalized in August in the United States with Agrod Electronics. Agrod Electronics was one of America's two largest electronics dealers and held an influential sales network in both the United States and Canada, with Totsuko's products being the first Japanese products in their lineup. The contract of course stipulated that the radios would be sold under the Sony brand, a fact that Morita made sure of. While most Japanese radios were sold in America under local brand names, Totsuko made a bet on establishing their own brand name with Sony - a sign of their confidence that even without a local name backing them, the product would speak for both itself, and the nascent brand.

To grow the Sony brand name in Japan as well, Totsuko installed a large neon sign at the Sukiyabashi intersection in Ginza, first lit at the sign's lighting ceremony held on December 29. Ibuka flipped the switch, and immediately the neon SONY letters began lighting up the night sky. Measuring a full ten meters on each side, the massive display cost a hefty twenty million yen.
This cost was almost immediately recouped, however, as that New Year's Eve, the NHK's year-end broadcast fortuitously beamed those giant neon SONY letters into the homes of countless viewers across Japan. "That just paid for itself," said Ibuka, rejoicing as he saw the sign on TV.

With the new year came a new name, as this was when the company was officially renamed to "Sony," signifying new plans and a new future for the company. It had been three years since the Sony name graced the labels of its transistor radios, but opposition to the name change was still prevalent. "Are we really going to change `Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo,' the name that we spent a decade building up?" some protested. "It's so we can keep growing across the globe," replied Morita decisively. Chairman Mandai and President Ibuka were in agreement. There had also been proposals for names such as "Sony Electrical Engineering," but Morita was opposed to adding words that had anything to do with electronics. Without knowing what they would be creating in the future, it was impossible to say that they would continue to work only with electronics. The decision to change to a more globally receptive company name was set - and the upper management's expectations would soon prove true, as Sony's reputation continued to grow day by day.