Of Walkmans and world firsts: Japan’s gadget hall of fame
The respond is that they take all now assumed their spots on the roster of Nihon's Essential Historical Materials for Science and Technology – that country'due south quirkily compiled, ever-expanding hall of fame for the contraptions that really count.
Without ever quite proverb it, this list represents the concept of disruption earlier Silicon Valley co-opted the give-and-take. Only the best Japanese gadgets need utilise. The coveted places are awarded, at the rate of about 20 per year, by experts at Tokyo'south National Museum of Nature and Science.
There are several categories of qualification, any i of which can put an era- or industry-defining piece of tech in contention. To make it on the listing, a Japanese gadget (or medicine or industrial advance) must have played a notable role in improving people's style of life or creating new ways of living; it must stand for a pivotal moment in scientific or technological development; it must represent an important moment in the relationship betwixt society and tech; information technology must demonstrate a "uniquely Japanese scientific or technological development from an international perspective" – ie, to have beaten the Americans, Brits or Germans to some coveted beachhead of postwar progress.
The 285 positions that have been awarded since the hall of fame opened in 2008 are held by a fabled range of inventions that date from the kickoff of Nippon's cracking modernisation. This year'southward entrants include non only a groundbreaking ethanol slurry distillation column that revolutionised Japanese agriculture in 1938 but also the Casio 1000-Daze picket (the Casio pocket estimator was inducted some years ago). Information technology qualifies for a place in the history books for its "astounding shock resistance".
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Some inventions, such as the 1882 cement-grinding mill, transformed an era when "tech" was something measured in tonnes and involved fe axles the size of a tree. Others, such as the PCM processor that essentially made habitation video possible, were the invisible progenitors of the digital age.
There are plenty of obvious oversupply-pleasers – such as the Motoman industrial robot. The Sony Walkman was the 109th item to exist inducted on to the list, and quite obviously belongs as a "changing the way we live" contender: what other gadget, subsequently all, tin claim to be the inspiration for a song ("Wired for Audio") by Cliff Richard?
The list is consistently surprising and endlessly worthy of perusal. It'due south very like shooting fish in a barrel to enjoy information technology for what it is. Merely you can also read it every bit a tightly divers history of the past 150 years of Japanese technology – and a farther reminder of how Japan prizes hardware over software.
There are numerous globe firsts, including the first inverter air conditioner for domicile use, the start VHF antenna, the outset radio phone and the start mobile telephone with built-in camera. Separated past decades, each has a serious merits to have changed the mode we live or, at the very least, to have inspired someone to have asked "what on world did we do earlier the . . . ?"
It is possible to quibble with some entrants. The TR-808 Rhythm composer from 1980 makes it in for "allowing freedom to program a rhythm design for an entire song and had a groovy outcome on the music scene". Other hall-of-famers, such every bit the extrusion-moulded joints for 500kV cables, crave some fairly technical knowledge to understand how they inverse the world.
Peradventure inadvertently, the list also raises an elusive question: Is it ever possible to precisely mensurate and compare the impact of two completely unlike technologies? In its current course, it isn't quite equipped to practice so: It appears to be compiled using scientific standards but remains, in reality, a subjective, impressionistic painting of progress. It leaves open, however, the clear prospect of becoming much less so over time as the bar to entry becomes higher and as those selecting the new entrants are forced to use stricter standards. At some signal, this list volition provide a means to quantify the human impact of tech, just non however.
Past Leo Lewis © 2022 The Financial Times
Leo Lewis is the FT's Tokyo correspondent
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Source: https://cnalifestyle.channelnewsasia.com/experiences/japan-technology-gadgets-245921
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