SONY KV-2202ET YEAR 1977.

The SONY KV-2202ET is 22 inches color television with SONY TRINITRON CRT TUBE with 114° degree and it has 12 programs preselection with potentiometers tuning search AFT system and ultrasonic remote control.
The mechanical turret approach to television tuning has been used almost exclusively for the past 60 years. Even though replete with the inherent disadvantages of mechanical complexity, unreliability and cost, such apparatus has been technically capable of performing its intended function and as a result the consumer has had to bear the burdens associated with the device. However, with the " recent " Broadcast demands for parity of tuning for UHF and VHF channels, the increasing number of UHF and cable TV stations have imposed new tuning performance requirements which severely tax the capability of the mechanical turret tuner. Consequently, attempts are now being made to provide all electronic tuning to meet the new requirements.

The invention relates to a tuning unit with bandswitch for high frequency receivers, especially radio and television receivers, having a potentiometer system for the control of capacity diodes, the said potentiometer system consisting of a plurality of parallel resistance paths along which wiper contacts can be driven by means of screw spindles disposed adjacent one another in a common insulating material housing in which a bandswitch formed of metal rods is associated with each tuning spindle.

In these tuning units, the working voltages of the capacity diodes in the tuning circuits are recorded once a precise tuning to the desired frequency has been performed. A potentiometer tuning system has great advantages over the formerly used channel selectors operating with mechanically adjustable capacitors (tuning condensers) or mechanically adjustable inductances (variometers), mainly because it is not required to have such great precision in its tuning mechanism.

Tuning units with bandswitches formed of variable resistances and combined with interlocking pushbuttons controlling the supply of recorded working voltages to capacity diodes are known. Channel selection is accomplished by depressing the knobs, and the tuning or fine tuning are performed by turning the knobs. The resistances serving as voltage dividers in these tuning units are combined into a component unit such that they are in the form of a ladderlike pattern on a common insulating plate forming the cover of the housing in which the tuning spindles and wiper contacts corresponding to the variable resistances are housed. The number of resistances corresponds to the number of channels or frequencies which are to be recorded. The wiper contact picks up a voltage which, when applied to the capacity diodes determines their capacitance and hence the frequency of the corresponding oscillating circuit. The adjustment of the wipers is performed by turning the tuning spindle coupled to the tuning knob. By the depression of a button the electrical connection between a contact rod and a tuning spindle is brought about and thus the selected voltage is applied to the capacity diodes. Since the push buttons release one another, it is possible simply by depressing another button to tune to a different receiving frequency or a different channel, as the case may be.

 Moreover, using this arrangement, the only indication--during adjustment--of which channel is selected is by station identification.

In the end of the 60's  increasingly attention was focused on the varicap diode tuner as the latest, sophisticated means of television receiver frontend tuning in both colour and black and white sets.
 The main purpose of this article is to investigate the servicing problems associated with this comparatively new method of tuning.

First however let's briefly recap on the principles involved in this tuning system:

 The tuners use variable capacitance (or "varicap") diodes as the variable tuning elements: the effective capacitance of the diodes is controlled by the reverse bias applied across them, tuning being achieved by varying this voltage. As the reverse bias across a varicap diode is increased so its junction depletion region widens thus reducing its capacitance.
A VHF/ UHF television tuner is constructed in accordance with the present invention includes a preselector tuned circuit having a solid state voltage controlled capacitor as its tunable element, a radio frequency amplifier coupled to the preselector circuit and alsoother circuit to perfect the signal receiving capability and the application the like.

Considering the Mechanical Tuner Problems:

To get the servicing problems in perspective let us next consider the tuning arrangements previously used.
 The earliest of these, employed on v.h.f., was the switched tuner which was either of the turret or incremental type.
 The turret tuner substituted a coil bearing "biscuit" mounted on the rotating drum or turret when channels were changed. Twelve positions were normally provided, with a fine tuning knob to adjust the local oscillator frequency. As its name suggests the incremental tuner simply added more inductance to the tuned circuits at every downward channel movement: thus the highest inductance was present on channel one and the least on channel 12 (which normally covered 13 as well with manipulation of the fine tuner).
The movement towards u.h.f. TV working, initially with dual standard sets and later with single standard ones, brought about the need for u.h.f. tuners. In the earliest u.h.f. receivers valve tuners which were not particularly efficient were used.

The drive mechanism was usually a dual  speed rotary system calibrated from channels 21 to 68. Experience in the field indicated that 625 line television was in many cases considered by the viewer to be inferior to 405 -line reception, on account of the poor signal to noise ratio achieved by the valve tuners. Many viewers were not prepared to use external u.h.f. aerials of course, having achieved satisfactory reception on v.h.f. with an indoor aerial: this aggravated the situation even more.
Another aspect which caused difficulty was the care needed to tune in a u.h.f. channel using a rotary tuner covering the whole of Bands IV and V. Many viewers simply could not tune in BBC 2  or ZDF or ORF or any channel correctly with such a tuning mechanism, finding that they had passed right over the channel they wanted before realising what they had done.
The advent of transistor tuners rapidly improved the quality of u.h.f. reception but use of a rotary mechanism was continued by many manufacturers. Thus while potential reception was improved the same tuning difficulties remained and viewers continued to gravitate towards 405 line viewing using the "old faithful" switched tuner. The operational breakthrough came with the introduction of the push-button u.h.f. channel change. 

The mechanism is basically simple. Adjustable push buttons press down on a lever bar which in turn rotates the tuner's variable capacitors to the appropriate position. Each button is capable of tuning over the entire u.h.f. bands and this leads to customer confusion at times when after some adjustments which were too heavy handed they find themselves receiving ITV on a BBC button or a ORF and ZDF broadcasting or any channel possible !

Mechanical Faults:

 Mechanical tuning obviously has its snags. There are for example contact springs which earth the tuning capacitor and go intermittent. This gives rise to the most random tuning defects, capable of driving the. most patient viewer to a state of total exasperation. It is also possible for the rotation mechanism to hang up and jam intermittently, or just become sticky, so that the reset accuracy of the mechanism is impaired and the receiver has to be retuned every time the channel is changed.
The vanes in the tuning capacitor can also short out at different settings, thereby eliminating some channels. The  Varicap Tuner It will be seen then that mechanical defects can cause very irritating fault symptoms. If one thinks along the lines that anything mechanical is nasty, then the elimination of mechanical parts can only be to the good.

The logic of this is splendid provided the electronic replacement for the mechanical system is more reliable! Otherwise we are leaping out of the frying pan into the fire! In the light of experience gained with mechanical tuning devices it seems great that with the varicap tuner we have at last dispensed with the dreaded rotary tuning capacitor, replacing it instead with a variable voltage to the tuner. 
Let us think about this however since things are never quite as simple as they first appear. The tuning voltage has to be variable in order to tune the receiver. Obviously then a means of varying the voltage has to be provided to act as the tuning control.
As it is a voltage that has to be varied the tuning control takes the form of a potentiometer., Now we have returned to a mechanical system again, though in a less complex form.
A potentiometer is required for each channel, selected by pressing the appropriate channel button.

We have lost a tuning capacitor and its rotating mechanism and gained a set of pots and selector switches therefore. Provided the pots and switches are mechanically more reliable than the tuning capacitor we should be better off-or should we? 

Need for Voltage Stabilisation.
 The voltage selected by the pots cannot be allowed to drift otherwise the receiver will go off -tune. The voltage supply to the potentiometers has to be stabilised therefore and a stabilising zener diode or integrated circuit (TAA550) .is needed for this purpose.

Any failure in this part of the circuit will give rise to tuning drift or worse, a total loss of reception. A short-circuit TAA550 for example will completely remove the tuning voltage while if it is open circuit the tuning can vary with picture brightness. Likewise any intermittency in the potentiometers or associated switching and/or resistors can also cause problems.

Relative Reliability of Tuners:

 It  will be seen then that in order to lose our troublesome mechanical arrangement we have had to introduce considerably more electronics which we trust are going to be more reliable. In addition we have not so far considered the relative reliability of the varicap tuner itself compared with the mechanical type. Since two r.f. transistors are generally used to compensate for the reduced Q of the varicap tuned circuits we immediately have twice the likelihood of an r.f. stage breaking down! 
And being semiconductors the varicap diodes themselves are more likely to fail than the sections of a ganged tuning capacitor. It is reasonable then to conclude that if mechanical faults are the most prevalent the use of varicap tuners will make life easier. Mechanical faults are generally not too difficult to sort out however and the field engineer can often cope with them in the home. 
Can the same be said of the varicap tuner? It seems that this type of tuner does not need so much attention as its mechanical counterpart but is likely to throw up some much more difficult faults when it does, resulting in bench repairs being needed. So far my own experience has indicated that varicap tuning faults nearly always need servicing on the bench.
Generally speaking it seems true to say that varicap tuners themselves are adequately reliable: the snags result from the tuning system and stabilised power supply.

Tuning Drift with Varicap Tuners:

 If a varicap tuned receiver is constantly drifting off tune the +30V supply should be the number one suspect. It is best to connect an Avometer permanently to the supply so that it can be precisely monitored-if necessary write down the exact voltage measured.
 If the receiver drifts, check the voltage. If it has changed, even slightly, this may well be enough to be the cause of the fault. To pinpoint and confirm the diagnosis aerosol freezer should be applied to the stabiliser i.c. or zener. If the voltage returns to normal or changes wildly for the worse the stabiliser is almost certainly the cause of the trouble and should be replaced.
A prolonged soak test should then be carried out. Another point concerning varicap tuners arises with their use in colour receivers.

 There were  makers of the most expensive colour receiver on the market still didn't use a varicap tuner but instead use a mechanical one. The makers' claim is that the signal to-noise ratio of the varicap tuner is inadequate for their colour standards. Undoubtedly the results obtained on the receiver seem to confirm this. Interestingly, the same manufacturers use varicap tuners in their black -and -white receivers, and the tuning button system is often full of troublesome intermittent contacts. The varicap tuner has its advantages and disadvantages then. Probably the simplest comment would be to say that when it is good it is very very good but when it is bad it is horrid!

Where such apparatus as television receivers are to be controlled from a viewer location as to channel, volume, brightness, etc., the remote control systems usually are made up of a hand held transmitter which transmits an ultrasonic signal to a receiver connected to or built within the television receiver. The depression of buttons on the transmitter causes a variety of signals or signal frequencies to be transmitted, whereby channel change, volume change, etc. is responsively obtained.
However such systems have individually suffered from one or more problems, such as inability to have direct access to the desired channel, slow access, insufficient noise immunity making it often possible to operate the system with the jingling of a key chain or an ultrasonic sound originating from a dishwasher etc., unreliable control due to the absence of means to detect and suppress transmission errors resulting from echoes, interfering signal sources, etc. Also some control systems are not suitable for continuous analog commands such as volume, brightness, etc. Existing systems also often require the need for bandpass filters and accurate crystal oscillators which make them costly. Many systems are not very suitable for integration into custom integrated circuits.
The present invention provides a remote control system whereby the nature of the remote control signal allows utmost reliability of control. The remote control receiver will be found to be virtually immune to echoes and ambient ultrasonic noises, and therefore will not produce a false response in the presence of echoes and ultrasonic interfering signals. A variety of kinds of commands can be provided, and with the preferred embodiment disclosed, up to ninety-nine channels in a television receiver can be instantaneously selected, without the requirement for sequentially stepping through each channel. Volume can be varied or muted, tint or brightness controlled, etc.
The above advantages are obtained by the transmission of a unique type of two tone coded signal which advantageously contains information defining start-up transmitted data, type of command (i.e. channel select identification or miscellaneous command such as volume), information permitting reconstruction of clock and identification of end of data. The two tones are transmitted sequentially. The second tone is transmitted to provide masking of echoes produced by the first tone and to mask noises that may be present in the operating environment of the system.
Since the two tones may be close together in frequency, it is possible to operate the remote control system in conjunction with high sensitivity resonant type microphones, thereby achieving high sensitivity together with high noise immunity. This also eliminates the need for input bandpass amplifiers.
The inventive receiver is thus rendered immune from operation by extraneous noise further by the provision of received data error checking circuitry for the timing of input pulses, etc., and for rejecting the data if an error is detected. The receiver also has provision for operation of continuous analog circuits in a television set, such as brightness, volume and tint controls, etc. Since echoes are masked out in the present system, data transmission can occur much more rapidly than in prior systems, as the receiver does not have to wait until echoes die out between transmission of bits for identification of data pulses.
Since all that is frequency dependent is the detection of signal above or below a predetermined reference frequency, accurate crystals for timing and reference frequency generation are not needed. The receiver is virtually entirely digital logic, making it suitable for monolithic integration with a minimum of external components. CMOS integrated circuit logic is preferred, minimizing power supply requirements.
In the preferred embodiment, two digits are transmitted separately and the second must be received within a given time interval, or the first number is disregarded. This method eliminates the need for a clear key as normally present on calculators.
The output of the receiver is a binary or BCD signal which can be used by known means to control the frequency of a selected channel, or to perform other functions such as variation of volume, control of brightness, tint, etc. in a television set.
It should also be understood that the use of this invention is not intended to be restricted to a television set, but can be utilized for the control of a large variety of other kinds of apparatus, e.g. door locks, household appliances, radio receivers, production machinery, etc. While the description below will be directed to a wireless ultrasonic transmitter-receiver system, it should be understood that a wired system, a radio control system, etc. could be used in the alternative.
The advantages of the invention are obtained by the provision of a system including means for receiving a transmitted signal comprising a pulse envelope modulated continuous wave ultrasonic signal at a first predetermined frequency, each pulse being immediately followed by a continuous wave ultrasonic signal at a second predetermined frequency which has amplitude such as to mask echoes of the first predetermined frequency at the receiving means, the pulses being representative of a sequence of binary bits, means to determine whether the received signal is above or below the frequency of a reference frequency, means for recognizing a change in input frequency with respect to the reference frequency, and means for counting said changes, determining the value of the binary bits, and providing a parallel coded signal representative of said value.

Was last SONY model series with ultrasonic remote and potentiometric tuning.


SONY KV-2202ET  DESIGNED BY:Hartmut Esslinger (born June 5, 1944) is a German-American industrial designer and inventor. He is known for his design company Frogdesign, particularly his work for Apple Computer in the 1980s.

Esslinger was born in Beuren (Simmersfeld), in Germany's Black Forest.

At age 25, Esslinger finished his studies at the Hochschule für Gestaltung Schwäbisch Gmünd in Schwäbisch Gmünd. After vicious criticism of a radio clock he designed while in school, he started his own design agency in 1969, later renamed Frogdesign. For his first client, German avant-garde consumer electronics company Wega, he created the first "full plastics" color TV and HiFi series "Wega system 3000". His work for Wega won him instant international fame. In 1974, Esslinger was hired by Sony - Sony also acquired Wega shortly after - and he was instrumental in creating a global design image for Sony, especially with the Sony Trinitron and personal music products. The Sony-Wega Music System Concept 51K was chosen by the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

As of 1976, Esslinger also worked for Louis Vuitton.

In 1982 he entered into an exclusive $1,000,000 per year contract with Apple Computer to create a design strategy which transformed Apple from a "Silicon Valley Start-Up" into a global brand. Setting up shop in California for the first time, Esslinger and Frogdesign created the "Snow White design language" which was applied to all Apple product lines from 1984 to 1990, commencing with the Apple IIc and including the Macintosh computer.[2] The original Apple IIc was acquired by the Whitney Museum of Art in New York and Time voted it Design of the Year. Soon after Steve Jobs' departure, Esslinger broke his own contract with Apple and followed Jobs to NeXT.

Other major client engagements include Lufthansa's global design and brand strategy, SAP's corporate identity and software user interface, Microsoft Windows branding and user interface design, Siemens, NEC, Olympus, HP, Motorola and General Electric.

In December 1990 Esslinger was featured on the cover of BusinessWeek the only living designer thus honored since Raymond Loewy in 1934. Esslinger is a founding Professor of the Hochschule fuer Gestaltung in Karlsruhe, Germany and since 2006 he is a Professor for convergent industrial design at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, Austria. In 1996, Esslinger was awarded an honorary doctorate of Fine Arts by the Parsons School of Design, New York.

In 2009 Esslinger published A Fine Line in which he explores business solutions that are environmentally sustainable and contribute to an enduring global economy.

In recent years, Frogdesign has survived two acquisitions. In 2006 it was purchased by Flextronics. Soon afterwards it was purchased by the leveraged buyout firm KKR as part of a group several of Flextronics units and packaged into a software company called Aricent.

Prof. Hartmut Esslinger is a Master of Strategic Design with The Beijing DeTao Masters Academy (DTMA) , a high-level, multi-disciplined, application-oriented higher education institution in Shanghai, China.

(To see the Internal Chassis Just click on Older Post Button on bottom page, that's simple !)

.........................1967-1977 10 YEARS of color engineering, industrial, administrative and political factors all became hopelessly intertwined in the long but eventually unsuccessful attempt to establish a single colour - encoding system for Europe. From 1962-67 the struggle oscillated wildly between the three main systems - the American NTSC, the French SEC AM and the German PAL. There were also many variations within the SECAM and PAL systems, plus some outsiders such as NIIR, FAM, TSC, SEQUIN, LEP, and counter ideas such as the Post Office's pilot -tone reference system for NTSC, suggested by Dr N. W. J. Lewis in 1964. In February 1965 the official European delegation went to the CCIR Study Group XI meetings at Vienna firmly committed to support NTSC - yet before the end of that year it had swung over equally firmly to support PAL. Indeed for much of 1964 and 1965 the only public support in the Europeans for either PAL or SECAM came from a few technical journalists and the small engineering team at ABC, Teddington. At that period the British industry, through BREMA, was solidly behind NTSC. The BBC's then Director of Engineering, Sir Francis McLean, wrote in March 1965 that "the NTSC system is much to be preferred". The PMG made a statement in the House of Commons on February 3, 1965 in favour of NTSC. Yet today almost everyone in British broadcasting circles sincerely believes that the European made the right choice in opting for PAL. Even in the United States, the birthplace of NTSC, one finds a belief that European television benefits from having chosen PAL or SECAM, though clearly many of the original problems in handling and, particularly, in tape recording NTSC have now been largely overcome. Why did it take skilled engineers and administrators so long to come to what, with hindsight, may seem the obvious choice? And why we were still left with all three systems in general use?

Sony Corporation (Sonī Kabushiki Gaisha) (TYO: 6758, NYSE: SNE), or commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate with revenue exceeding ¥ 7.730.0 trillion, or US$77.20 billion (FY2010). Sony is one of the leading manufacturers of electronics, products for the consumer and professional markets.

Sony Corporation is the electronics business unit and the parent company of the Sony Group, which is engaged in business through its eight operating segments – Consumer Products & Devices (CPD), Networked Products & Services (NPS), B2B & Disc Manufacturing (B2B & Disc), Pictures, Music, Financial Services, Sony Ericsson and All Other. These make Sony one of the most comprehensive entertainment companies in the world. Sony's principal business operations include Sony Corporation (Sony Electronics in the U.S.), Sony Pictures Entertainment, Sony Computer Entertainment, Sony Music Entertainment, Sony Ericsson, and Sony Financial. As a semiconductor maker, Sony is among the Worldwide Top 20 Semiconductor Sales Leaders.

Its founders Akio Morita and Masaru Ibuka derived the name from sonus, the Latin word for sound, and also from the English slang word "sonny", since they considered themselves to be "sonny boys", a loan word into Japanese which in the early 1950s connoted smart and presentable young men.

History
Masaru Ibuka, the co-founder of Sony:

In late 1945, after the end of World War II, Masaru Ibuka started a radio repair shop in a bomb-damaged department store building in Nihonbashi of Tokyo. The next year, he was joined by his colleague, Akio Morita, and they founded a company called Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo K.K., (Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation). The company built Japan's first tape recorder called the Type-G.

In the early 1950s, Ibuka traveled in the United States and heard about Bell Labs' invention of the transistor.
 He convinced Bell to license the transistor technology to his Japanese company. While most American companies were researching the transistor for its military applications, Ibuka and Morita looked to apply it to communications. Although the American companies Regency[disambiguation needed] and Texas Instruments built the first transistor radios, it was Ibuka's company that made them commercially successful for the first time.

In August 1955, Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo released the Sony TR-55, Japan's first commercially produced transistor radio.[9] They followed up in December of the same year by releasing the Sony TR-72, a product that won favor both within Japan and in export markets, including Canada, Australia, the Netherlands and Germany. Featuring six transistors, push-pull output and greatly improved sound quality, the TR-72 continued to be a popular seller into the early sixties.

In May 1956, the company released the TR-6, which featured an innovative slim design and sound quality capable of rivaling portable tube radios. It was for the TR-6 that Sony first contracted "Atchan", a cartoon character created by Fuyuhiko Okabe, to become its advertising character. Now known as "Sony Boy", the character first appeared in a cartoon ad holding a TR-6 to his ear, but went on to represent the company in ads for a variety of products well into the mid-sixties.[8] The following year, 1957, Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo came out with the TR-63 model, then the smallest (112 × 71 × 32 mm) transistor radio in commercial production. It was a worldwide commercial success.

University of Arizona professor Michael Brian Schiffer, Ph.D., says, "Sony was not first, but its transistor radio was the most successful. The TR-63 of 1957 cracked open the U.S. market and launched the new industry of consumer microelectronics." By the mid 1950s, American teens had begun buying portable transistor radios in huge numbers, helping to propel the fledgling industry from an estimated 100,000 units in 1955 to 5,000,000 units by the end of 1968.

Sony's headquarters moved to Minato, Tokyo from Shinagawa, Tokyo around the end of 2006.
Origin of name

When Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo was looking for a romanized name to use to market themselves, they strongly considered using their initials, TTK. The primary reason they did not is that the railway company Tokyo Kyuko was known as TKK. The company occasionally used the acronym "Totsuko" in Japan, but during his visit to the United States, Morita discovered that Americans had trouble pronouncing that name. Another early name that was tried out for a while was "Tokyo Teletech" until Morita discovered that there was an American company already using Teletech as a brand name.

The name "Sony" was chosen for the brand as a mix of two words. One was the Latin word Sonus which is the root of "sonic" and "sound" and the other was "sonny," a familiar term used in 1950s America to call a boy.
The first Sony-branded product, the TR-55 transistor radio, appeared in 1955 but the company name did not change to Sony until January 1958.

At the time of the change, it was extremely unusual for a Japanese company to use Roman letters to spell its name instead of writing it in kanji. The move was not without opposition: TTK's principal bank at the time, Mitsui, had strong feelings about the name. They pushed for a name such as Sony Electronic Industries, or Sony Teletech. Akio Morita was firm, however, as he did not want the company name tied to any particular industry. Eventually, both Ibuka and Mitsui Bank's chairman gave their approval.

By Japanese standards Sony is a comparative newcomer. It started out in May 1946, recently celebrating its fiftieth anniversary. Most of the major Japanese companies in the consumer electronics field were formed much earlier. Hitachi and Toshiba for example date from the nineteenth century, Matsuhsita from the early years of the twentieth century. During those fifty years however Sony's achievements have been second to none. Sony started operations as Tokyo Tsuchin Kogyo (Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation). Its aim was "to make unique products", and to "create and introduce technologies that larger companies cannot match". One of its earliest achievements was Japan's first reel-to-reel audio tape recorder, which was launched in 1950. The tape to go with it, also developed by the company, was called Soni-tape. In 1954 the company launched the first all -transistor radio to go into production anywhere. When, in the following year, it decided to start exporting, a simple brand name that would be easily recognised in any part of the globe was required. Sony was the obvious answer, and in 1958 the company changed its name to the Sony Corporation. The Sony Corporation of America was set up in 1960. Sony UK, in 1968, brought Sony to Europe. Innovation continued apace. In 1960 Sony launched the fast fully transistorised portable TV receiver. Five years later the first open -reel video tape recorder for domestic use was introduced. The Trinitron colour system arrived in 1968. It was incredible, though typical, that Sony should develop its own colour TV tube from scratch. While relying on the traditional three primary colour phosphors and a shadowmask, the phosphors were laid down in stripes, the mask became a shadow grille, the guns were arranged in -line and the faceplate became much flatter. This was to be the way tube development would go. The Betamax VCR system was introduced in 1975. It is today generally accepted that it was the best of its time. But, as with the Trinitron system, Sony wouldn't licence it to other manufacturers. That mistake led to its demise, and wasn't repeated. The 8nun video system, which has come to dominate the camcorder field, was launched by Sony ten years later, in 1985. Meanwhile Sony had had an extraordinary success with the Walkman portable audio system, which was launched in 1979. This is claimed to have been "the single best-selling consumer electronics product ever marketed". Sony kept up the pace of development, moving on to digital systems. The MiniDisc, capable of both record and playback, arrived in 1993. In 1995 Sony was first to launch a digital camcorder. A home DV recorder is due later this year, along with a device called the DV cap: this links a DV camera to a PC for editing and image manipulation. There have been a number of other significant developments in recent times. The highly successful PlayStation established Sony in the video games market. Sony is to introduce its first PC later this year, while "a true living -room computer" is promised for next year. Plasmatron large, flat screen TV sets are already available in Japan. DVD players are another imminent prospect. All in all it has been an extraordinary story, and Sony's position at the centre of electronics development looks set to continue indefinitely. The company has combined world -class R&D capabilities, manufacturing excellence, the ability to read and to create markets, and remarkable marketing skills. The UK's main CE innovator for a long time, Amstrad, makes a sorry contrast. For a time Amstrad couldn't do anything wrong. It came up with a string of innovative ideas and products, skillfully meeting and developing user requirements. Packaged audio, wordprocessors then an IBM PC clone. There were the combined TV/VCR units, then the video Double Decker. Amstrad was in and out of audio, video and TV, always with highly competitive products. The company came up with the first Sky package at under £200. But while it came up with products that met contemporary needs, it never seemed to take root and grow. We are now witnessing its final dismemberment. Psion, the hand-held computer manufacturer, is negotiating to take over Amstrad's digital telephone interests, which fit in with its own product development programme. Amstrad's loss - making consumer electronics interests are to be split between Betacom, an affiliated company, and a new company to be called Digicom Technology. The latter will take over Amstrad's analogue satellite business and inherit a small R&D operation. How did Sony succeed, starting out with twenty employees, no machinery and negligible capital, while Amstrad simply shuffles off stage? Because Amstrad never developed a comprehensive business strategy. It came up with bright ideas, subcontracted production, stocked up then walked away as soon as the market turned.

It's the tragic story of much of UK and European industry.

R.I.P. EUROPE.

• Some References:

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• Further reading

• Made in Japan by Akio Morita and Sony, HarperCollins (1994)^{[ISBN missing]}Sony: The Private Life by John Nathan, Houghton Mifflin (1999)^{[ISBN missing]}Sony Radio, Sony Transistor Radio 35th Anniversary 1955–1990 – information booklet (1990)^{[ISBN missing]}The Portable Radio in American Life by University of Arizona Professor Michael Brian Schiffer, PhD (The University of Arizona Press, 1991).The Japan Project: Made in Japan – a documentary about Sony's early history in the U.S. by Terry Sanders.^{[ISBN missing]}