Hisashige Tanaka

Hisashige Tanaka (September 18, 1799 – November 7, 1881) lived during the Edo period of Japan's history. He was born in Kurume, Japan, as a child of a tortoise-shell craftsman.

A gifted artisan and thinker, possibly a believer in natural philosophy, he was hailed in his own lifetime as mechanical genius, and has since been compared with great inventors in the West such as Thomas Edison.

In 1852 he established a shop called the 'Hall of Automata' in Kyoto. This was at the end of the Tokugawa era, when the government was forced out of isolation. Tanaka was summoned by Saga Domain to advise on technological modernisation, and was set to work unravelling the secrets of western technology. In less than a year he had built Japan's first known working model of a steam locomotive. To highlight his genius, this was accomplished by using a Dutch reference book, before he had ever seen a real steam engine.

He founded Tanaka Seizosho (Tanaka Engineering Works) in 1875. The company name was changed in 1904 to Shibaura Seizosho (Shibaura Engineering Works). The merger of in 1939 of Shibaura Seisakusho and Tokyo Denki created a new company called Tokyo Shibaura Denki. It was soon nicknamed Toshiba, but it wasn't until 1978 that the company was officially renamed Toshiba Corporation.

Of the many devices he designed, his 10,000 year clock (also called a 'Myriad year clock') and arrow-firing automaton 'Bowing Boy' (see also: karakuri), have received the most global press.