Technology History | NEC — Two Hundred Thousand Yen the Day Foreign Capital Became Legal

People treat NEC as the Shiba Super Tower that always sold a public-sector system and a face-recognition camera from a Minato listing.

The first book was Japan's first foreign joint venture.

On 17 July 1899, the day treaty revision let foreign capital operate beyond the treaty ports, Kunihiko Iwadare and Takeshiro Maeda incorporated Nippon Electric Company with Western Electric.

Capital was two hundred thousand yen in 1899 money. Western Electric took fifty-four percent. Iwadare, who had worked for Edison in the United States, held thirty-three percent and ran the shop. W. T. Carleton sat for the American side.

The first work was import and repair of Western Electric telephones and switches. Domestic manufacture followed once the shop could copy a board without a crate from Chicago.

The later campus rose on Shiba 5-chome as the Super Tower in 1990. The 1899 rooms did not survive as a museum.

The mechanism is still the first one.

A switchboard assembled in Tokyo from a licensed drawing let the Ministry buy a telephone without waiting on a ship. Whoever held that licence held the next exchange.

A visitor at 5-7-1 Shiba still faces the 180-metre tower. The first desk is gone. The joint venture is where the book started.

Photo: Minato streetscape, Wikimedia Commons contributors, via Wikimedia Commons.