After the war, two engineers set up shop in a bombed-out Tokyo department store. Their first product was an electric rice cooker: a wooden tub with aluminium electrodes that cooked rice by passing current through it. It mostly burned or undercooked the rice. They then paid Western Electric $25,000 for the right to make Bell Labs’ new transistor. Then in 1955 they sold a pocket radio. Name the company.
CLUES:
The name combines the Latin root for sound, with a common American diminutive for the same word.
The brand appeared on its radios in 1955, but the company didn’t take it as its own name until 1958.