TEAC Corporation

This article is about the company. For the antioxidant measure, see Trolox equivalent antioxidant capacity. For the type of wood, see teak.
TEAC Corporation
Native name
ティアック株式会社
Public KK
Traded as TYO: 6803
Industry Electronics
Founded Tokyo, Japan (August 29, 1953 (1953-08-29))
Headquarters Ochiai, Tama-shi, Tokyo, 206-8530, Japan
Key people
Yuji Hanabusa
(President)
Products
  • Peripheral equipment
  • Consumer and professional audio equipment
  • Information equipment
Revenue

JPY 20.3 billion (FY 2014)

(US$ 185 million) (FY 2014)

JPY -1.8 billion (FY 2014)

(US$ -16.6 million) (FY 2014)
Number of employees
1,046 (consolidated, as of September 30, 2015)
Parent Gibson Brands, Inc. (54.42%)[1]
Website Official website
Footnotes / references
[2][3]

TEAC Corporation (ティアック株式会社 Tiakku Kabushiki-gaisha) (pronounced "Tee-ack") is an electronics company based in Japan. TEAC was founded in 1953 as the Tokyo Electro Acoustic Company.[4]

Overview

The TEAC 2340, a popular early (1973) home multitrack recorder, four tracks on ¼ inch tape.
TEAC CRC 90 minute audio cassette. Note that the tape reels resemble a reel-to-reel tape with the tape covered by a plastic covering, this is for cosmetic appearance only, and is not thought to improve quality of the audio cassette.

TEAC has four divisions:

TEAC is known for its audio equipment, and was a primary manufacturer of high-end audio equipment in the 1970s and 1980s. During that time, TEAC produced notable reel-to-reels, cassette decks, CD players, turntables and amplifiers.

Of particular note is that TEAC produced an audio cassette with tape hubs that resembled reel-to-reel tape reels in appearance. Many manufacturers at the time used these TEAC cassettes in advertisements of their tape decks because the TEAC cassettes looked more professional than standard audio cassettes, and because reel-to-reel tape recordings were known to be of higher quality than cassette recordings.

In the 80s and 90s TEAC became well known for producing inexpensive high quality floppy disk drives. Up until the mid 90s floppy drive quality was inconsistent, often resulting in a disk that could be read only with the drive that wrote it due to minor variances in manufacturing specifications. TEAC became a leader in high quality floppy drives during this time.

History

The company that eventually became the TEAC corporation was founded in August 1953. Originally named the Tokyo Television Acoustic Company,[4] it employed Katsuma Tani, a former aviation and aeronautics engineer,[5] who established a reputation as a highly qualified creator of audio equipment.

In 1956 his brother, Tomoma Tani, brought home a hand-made, 3-motor, 3-head stereo tape recorder. This sparked Katsuma's interest in reel-to-reel tape recorders. Confident they could engineer a better tape recorder, the Tani brothers founded the Tokyo Electro-Acoustic Company on December 24, 1956.[6]

The Tokyo Television Acoustic Company and the Tokyo Electro-Acoustic Company were merged to create the TEAC corporation. The main focus of the new company was to design and manufacture tape recorders.[4]

In 2013 Gibson Brands Inc. bought a majority stake in the company.[7]

Computer tape memory systems

In May 1961 TEAC entered into a licensing agreement with IBM to create magnetic tape memory systems.

References

  1. "Company Profile". 4-traders.com. Surperformance SAS. Retrieved March 11, 2016.
  2. "Corporate Profile". TEAC Corporation. Retrieved March 11, 2016.
  3. "Company Profile". Nikkei Asian Review. Nikkei Inc. Retrieved March 11, 2016.
  4. 1 2 3 "TEAC Milestones". TEAC Audio Europe. TEAC Corporation. Retrieved March 11, 2016.
  5. "TEAC Corporation - Company Profile, Information, Business Description, History". ReferenceforBusiness.com. Advameg, Inc. Retrieved March 11, 2016.
  6. Alberts, Randy (2003). TASCAM: 30 Years of Recording Evolution. Hal Leonard Corporation. p. 15. ISBN 978-0-634-01156-6.
  7. "Gibson Guitar to buy TEAC, add "Cool Japan" engineering technology". Reuters (Thomson Reuters). March 29, 2013. Retrieved March 11, 2016.

External links

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