Word: toshiba
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...form the new materials into usable shapes. While metals bend, anyone who has dropped a dinner plate knows that ceramics do not. And a flexible material has a big advantage over a brittle one if it is to be coiled around an electromagnet. Says Osamu Horigami, chief researcher at Toshiba's Energy Science and Technology Laboratory: "To get a magnet or coil or even a wire we could use with complete confidence could take another five years." Agrees Hulm: "It will take extraordinary engineering to solve the brittleness problem...
Still, there are hints that some of the physical barriers, at least, are starting to fall. At the March meeting, scientists were already showing rings and flexible tapes made of high-temperature superconductors; by the end of the month, teams at IBM, Bell Labs, Toshiba, Argonne and a handful of other places were developing wire-thin ceramic rods. Says Toshiba's Horigami: "We weren't even sure this was possible. When we finally had a wire that could potentially be coiled, there was absolutely no way to measure our sense of triumph." Argonne Ceramist Roger Poeppel now talks of building...
Perhaps the most surprising sign of Japan's new hard times is the slump in the electronics industry. For the six months that ended Sept. 30, Toshiba's pretax profits plunged 80% from the same period in the previous year. At Fujitsu, Japan's top computermaker, profits fell 79%. Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Japan's leading business newspaper, last month reported that for the first time since 1975, Hitachi, Mitsubishi Electric and Fuji Electric planned temporary layoffs, shocking workers and managers in the industry. The companies denied the report, but rumors persist. Says Daisaku Kodama, an Osaka-based subcontractor for Matsushita...
...good printers to consider are the NEC P6 ($550) and the Toshiba 321 ($575). Less expensive dot matrix printers with a lower quality print style (and slower speed) include the Epson LX-86 ($349) and the Okidate ML182 ($295). When buying a dot matrix printer, be certain to look at print samples first...
Embittered manufacturers in the U.S. contend that Japanese makers have managed this coup by selling semiconductors at a loss, with the aim of pushing their U.S. competitors out of the market. The Japanese chipmakers tend to be diversified electronics giants (the big three: NEC, Hitachi and Toshiba) that can afford to lose money temporarily on semiconductors because they can rely on other revenue to tide them over. In contrast, U.S. chipmakers tend to be specialized, entrepreneurial companies that are more sensitive to profit slumps. An exception is IBM, the world's largest semiconductor maker, but the computer giant sells none...