Toshio Iue

Toshio Iue was a Japanese inventor and industrialist, born on 28 December 1902 and died on 16 July 1969, who founded the electronics maker Sanyo Electric. The son of a sailor from Awaji Island, he began as a sailor's apprentice, then took a job at an electric plant run by Konosuke Matsushita, who was married to one of his sisters, and became an expert salesman there. After the Second World War he stepped down from Matsushita's management so that Matsushita could stay on as head of the company. In 1947 Matsushita lent him an unused plant in Hyogo Prefecture, where he began making bicycle lamps under the name Sanyo, meaning three oceans in Japanese, in the hope of selling products across the Indian, Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. He handed the presidency of Sanyo to his brother in 1968.