Center of the History of Japanese Industrial Technology

Interesting stuff .

 

Thanks Mister X, actually the "Historical Development of Magnetic Recording and Tape Recorder" is really worth to read ,don't be afraid of the 275 pages ,it is full of interesting information. A documentation of sound recording .

 

The "Historical Development of Magnetic Recording and Tape Recorder" is chapter 3 and complete, of the 5 chapters in total (afaik) of volume 17 of
"National Museum of Nature and Science Systematic Examination of Technology Report".
I have the rest of the chapters if anyone interested but are totally irrelevant and in Japanese e.g. chapter 2 is about "Historical Development of Gas Engine for Industry and Marine Use",which ends in page 182 ,the page numbering is continuous in all 5 chapters, a usual practice in scholar publications.
In my post seemed like the 3 chapter has 275 page which is not the case ,nevertheless it is complete.

 

Ever heard of William Edwards Demming ? He was an American whose theories on quality control were adopted by the Japanese years before any other country, resulting in their products rapidly becoming the best quality in the world

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming

The bit at the end of the overview about Ford transmissions sums up the story.

Japanese electronics manufacturers adopted a similar approach. In the 1970s there were loads of British TV manufacturers.
I have read, probably in this excellent book,

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Setmakers-...&qid=1524901870&sr=8-1&keywords=the+setmakers

how the British manufacturers would buy cheap components and when the sets were completed have to spend a lot of effort finding faulty components. They would then replace these, throwing the faulty ones in the bin. Of course out of tolerance components close to failure left in the sets made British TVs unreliable.

In contrast the Japanese Manufacturers would spend more on their components but would make a bit fuss and reject the whole batch if they found a single out of spec component in a delivery. Consequently their TVs were more reliable.

By the end of the 1980s they had wiped British TV manufacturing with the exception of the Factories they took over (such as Toshiba taking over the Rank Bush Murphy factory in Plymouth) and ones they set up themselves such as the Sony factory in Wales (which now makes broadcast cameras and the Raspberry Pi).

 

@Mister X and @Longman your last posts above might be the best explanation for this scene from BTTF III :