A young man named Tokuji Hayakawa leased a house in the center of Tokyo and set himself up in business. At just 19 years of age, he started his own small metalworking shop; he went on to become the founder of Sharp Corporation -- one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer electronics products, information equipment and electronic components.
At the age of nine, he became a live-in apprentice to a metalworker who specialized in the manufacturing of women's hair ornaments and precision metal products. As he mastered traditional metalworking skills, the boy began to display remarkable inventiveness.
In 1912, while still an apprentice, he invented a snap buckle for Western-style belts. He patented it and called it the "Tokubijo" snap buckle

Sharp has made a huge impact on the market with its mobile phones, developed using its one-of-a-kind technologies. The J-SH04 was the industry's first mobile phone to feature an integrated 110,000-pixel CMOS image sensor for taking digital photos. It was followed by the industry's first application of a 65,536-color semi-transmissive TFT LCD on a flip type phone (J-SH05). Both models were supplied to J-Phone Co. Ltd., and raised Sharp's presence in the mobile phone market

Courtesy of Sharp