SHARP LAPTOPS
As a semiconductor maker, Sharp is among the Worldwide Top 20 Semiconductor Sales Leaders and among the Top 100 R&D Spenders in a list published by IEEE Spectrum magazine. It gained public awareness in the United Kingdom when it sponsored Manchester United F.C. from 1983 to 2000, which was a great period of success for the club.
It takes its name from one of its founder's first inventions, the Ever-Sharp mechanical pencil, which was invented by Tokuji Hayakawa in 1915. After the pencil business was destroyed by the Great Kanto earthquake in 1923, the company relocated to Osaka and started designing the first Japanese radio sets. These went on sale in 1925.
In 1953 it started production of the first television sets in Japan. Other notable achievements include the world's first all-transistor desktop calculator in 1964 and the first LCD calculator in 1973. LCD technology continues to be a key part of Sharp's product range, in both the component and the consumer-appliance sides of the business.
Recent Sharp products include the ViewCam, the Ultra-Lite notebook PC, the Zaurus personal digital assistant, Sidekick 3, and the Aquos flat screen television.
HISTORY OF COMPUTERS - continued (PREV) (PAGE 1)
The first working von Neumann machine was the Manchester "Baby" or Small-Scale Experimental Machine, built at the University of Manchester in 1948; it was followed in 1949 by the Manchester Mark I computer which functioned as a complete system using the Williams tube and magnetic drum for memory, and also introduced index registers. The other contender for the title "first digital stored program computer" had been EDSAC, designed and constructed at the University of Cambridge. Operational less than one year after the Manchester "Baby", it was also capable of tackling real problems.
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