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Iwadare had been an engineer for the Japanese government, with plenty of overseas experience working with Thomas Edison, the king of invention. Iwadare decided to offer to work with Western Electric not only out of the responsibility he felt, as the intermediary, for the breakdown of the U.S. – Japan negotiations, but also because of his deep technical insight.
At the time, telephony was still primarily used by the military and the government, but Iwadare recognized that it had the potential to become an indispensable part of the industrial infrastructure at a time when major industries were witnessing explosive growth. Additionally, he saw that although Japan was then importing finished products from overseas, the government would make it its mission to import technology to allow the manufacturing of high - quality products at home.
Western Electric accepted Iwadare’s proposal, and on July 17, 1899, Nippon Electric Company, Ltd. (which became NEC Corporation in 1983) came into being — on the very day that capital participation by an overseas company had become possible following a revision of treaties. |
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| NEC is working to develop a fuel cell - powered notebook as its vision for the future of PCs. For electrodes, the fuel cell uses carbon nanotubes, discovered in 1991 by Dr. Sumio Iijima, a senior research fellow at NEC Laboratories. Carbon nanotubes have been hailed as one of the key materials behind nanotechnology, which is expected to take off as the 21st century progresses. For example, research is underway into using carbon nanotubes in next - generation transistors. |
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