Hitachi TV Sets - From Electric Motors to Televisions to Semiconductors

Hitachi TV sets are manufactured by Hitachi, Ltd. headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. Hitachi is one of the world's largest manufacturer of consumer and industrial products. Aside from televisions, Hitachi makes products such as computer hardware, software systems, semiconductors and semiconductor manufacturing equipment, power plants, industrial machinery, household appliances and electronics, electric wires, and high functional materials. Hitachi also provides logistics, transportation, and financial services. In the television category, Hitachi televisions span a full technological spectrum, including some of the world's best plasma TV sets, LCD TVs, projection televisions, and HDTVs.

Hitachi, Ltd. has hundreds of subsidiaries around the world, and one of the world's largest research budgets. Just on its own, Hitachi's US subsidiary, Hitachi America Ltd., is a multi-billion dollar company.

The Hitachi company was started by Namihei Odaira in 1910, as an electrical repair shop, while he was working for a copper mining company in a town about 100 miles north of Tokyo called Hitachi. Odaira's first product was a five horsepower electric motor.

Odaira had difficulties selling his products because Japanese companies preferred foreign suppliers, but in 1914, World War I broke out, curtailing imports to Japan, and Odaira got an order for three large turbines from a major power company. Consequently, during the 1920s Hitachi became a major supplier of electrical equipment and machinery to Japanese companies, and throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Hitachi was an important supplier of sonar and radar equipment to the Japanese military.

The Hitachi company was devastated by World War II because many of it's factories were destroyed by Allied bombing, and some of the remaining ones were forced to close following Japan's loss. But it was a contract with the US military during the Korean War, between 1950 and 1953, that saved Hitachi from going out of business. During the 1950s Hitachi also expanded its operations into electronics, such as televisions, and computer technology.

In 1965 Hitachi began mass production of color TV tubes with rare earth phosphor material. In 1987 it completed the development of a rear-projection Hitachi TV screen. In 1995, the Hitachi PC Corporation was launched in the United States to produce and sell notebook computers. And throughout the 1990s Hitachi built its semiconductor business and became Japan's third larges semiconductor manufacturer in 2001.