Masaru Ibuka
Akio Morita and Masaru Ibuka, then operating under the business name Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo, had been working on plans to introduce a transistor radio to the market since 1953. When the TR-55 was released in Japan in August 1955, it was the first transistor radio marketed in that country. The TR-55 featured the Sony name, but the company did not officially change its name to Sony until January 1958.