Yamaha

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The Yamaha Corporation (ヤマハ株式会社, Yamaha Kabushiki Gaisha^?) (TYO: 7951) is a Japanese company with a wide range of products and services, predominantly musical instruments and electronics.

History

Yamaha was founded in 1887 as a piano and reed organ manufacturer by Torakusu Yamaha as Nippon Gakki Company, Limited (日本楽器製造株式会社, Nippon Gakki Seizō Kabushiki Gaisha^?) in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka prefecture, and was incorporated on October 12, 1897. The company's origins as a musical instrument manufacturer is still reflected today in the group's logo — a trio of interlocking tuning forks..

After World War II, company president Gen-ichi Kawakami, repurposed the remains of the company's war-time production machinery and the company's expertise in metallurgical technologies to the manufacture of motorcycles. The YA-1 (aka Akatombo, the "Red Dragonfly"), of which 125 were built in the first year of production (1954), was named in honor of the founder. It was a 125cc, single cylinder, two-stroke, streetbike patterned after the German DKW RT125 (which the British munitions firm, BSA, had also copied in the post-war era and manufactured as the Bantam, and Harley-Davidson as the Hummer). In 1955, the success of the YA-1 resulted in the founding of the Yamaha Motor Co., Ltd.

Yamaha has grown to become the world's largest manufacturer of musical instruments (including "silent" pianos, drums, guitars, violins, violas, celli, and vibraphones), as well as a leading manufacturer of semiconductors, audio/visual, computer related products, sporting goods, home appliances and furniture, specialty metals, machine tools, and industrial robots.

In October 1987, on the 100th anniversary, its name was changed to The Yamaha Corporation.

In 1989, Yamaha shipped the world's first CD recorder. Since then, Yamaha has purchased Sequential Circuits in 1988 and bought a significant share (51%) of competitor Korg in 1989–1993.

Read more at Wikipedia.org