Masaru Ibuka, co-founder of Sony Corp., dies at 89

Masaru Ibuka, who guided Sony Corp.'s rise from a humble radio shop to a world electronics leader and helped change global perceptions of Japanese manufacturers in the process, died of heart failure Friday (Dec. 19, 1997). He was 89.

Mr. Ibuka was a founder with Akio Morita and others of a company that later took the name Sony. Its success became an emblem of Japan's rise from the ashes of World War II.

"Mr. Ibuka was a person of an entirely different dimension," Sony chairman Norio Ohga said Friday. "He saw his ideas come to fruition one after another."

Those achievements included helping turn Sony into one of the first Japanese firms to successfully tackle global markets, transforming the image of Japanese manufacturers from incompetents to world leaders.

Mr. Ibuka, nicknamed "genius inventor" in college, began producing radio parts after he started a repair shop in a bombed-out building in Tokyo in 1945 as Japan was struggling to rise from the ruins of defeat.

After he was joined by Morita and 20 others, Mr. Ibuka's shop became Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corp.

One of Mr. Ibuka's first products was Japan's first tape recorder, produced after years of original experimentation with magnetic tape and metal powders.

In the early 1950s, Sony bought the rights to an American invention called the transistor.

Mr. Ibuka introduced Japan's first transistor radio, the beginning of a product line that made small cordless radios common.

"At that time, research and development of transistor (technology) was largely aimed at industrial and military use," Mr. Ibuka said in 1992.

Mr. Ibuka is survived by a son and two daughters. A private wake will be Sunday, followed by a funeral Monday.