Sony

Masaru Ibuka and Akio Morita founded Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo in Tokyo in 1946, and the company renamed itself Sony in 1958. Quiet Menace covers it through two machines that changed how people spent their free time. The TPS-L2 Walkman went on sale in Japan on July 1, 1979, for 33,000 yen. It could not record, it came with featherweight foam headphones, and it had two jacks and an orange hotline button because Sony worried that listening alone would look rude. Overseas it briefly sold as the Soundabout, the Stowaway and the Freestyle before Walkman became the global name. The PlayStation launched in Japan on December 3, 1994, after Nintendo walked away from a planned CD-ROM partnership and Norio Ohga backed Ken Kutaragi's plan for a console of Sony's own. Teiyu Goto designed the gray box and fought for the controller's grips, and his circle, cross, triangle and square still sit on every PlayStation pad. In Europe Sony pitched it through nightclubs such as Ministry of Sound. Goto's matte black PlayStation 2 followed in 2000 and became the best-selling console of all time. Sony also turns up in our Game Boy, iPod and Dieter Rams stories. Goto designed the VAIO logo too.