Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd. history

Instead, he left government service and founded his own manufacturing company, called Meikosha Company, in 1881 in the Shin-Sakanamachi area of Tokyo.

In 1890 telephone exchanges were set up in Tokyo and Yokohama, and Meikosha was among the Japanese companies that manufactured telephones for these systems.

By 1917, it had expanded its facilities to four manufacturing plants, and the company employed nearly 4,000 people.

After the Great Earthquake of 1923 caused severe damage to Tokyo's infrastructure, Japan's telephone exchanges became automated.

Later that year, however, the order was rescinded, and in 1949 the company was incorporated under its current name, Oki Electric Industry Company.

In 1953 Oki's rebuilt Shibaura plant opened and began manufacturing telephones and radios.

Beginning in 1962, with the encouragement of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI), Oki joined other Big Six computer firms in a series of joint research-and-development ventures.

In 1963 Oki entered into a joint venture with the American computer company Sperry Rand to manufacture mainframes under the name Oki Univac Kaisha, Ltd.

Managerial reform and recession of 1965

Oki established a new division in 1970 to develop computer software.

In 1981 it began to produce personal computers, one of the last of the Big Six to do so.

In the United States, Oki built a major manufacturing facility outside Atlanta in 1988 and an additional factory will open soon in Oregon.