The Walkman share

In the movie Guardians of the Galaxy, underdog Peter Quill “Star-Lord”, portrayed by Chris Pratt, faces the galaxy’s worst criminals. Using a Walkman he listens to Rupert Holmes’ catchy Escape (Piña Colada) song in order to stay connected with the Earth and the family he lost. 

SONY introduced in 1979 the Walkman, a portable cassette player that allowed you to listen to music while on the move with a small headset. The player fit in your hand and you could clip it onto your belt. By the time Sony had stopped production, 30 years later, they had built about 200 million cassette-based Walkmans.

This SONY specimen share certificate was printed by the Dai Nippon Printing Company and dates from 1975. The red characters in the center are 見本 : Mihon, meaning ‘specimen’. Note the odd denomination of 1-99 (number of shares) which suggests that the certificate was a presentation model. 

Masaru Ibuka and Akio Morita both served in the Imperial Japanese Navy during WW II. In 1946 they formed Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo (Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation) which became Sony in 1958.

The company would become world famous with electronic products, such as the portable transistor radio, cassette players, televisions, video recorders, the Discman, digital cameras, Vaio laptop computers, Playstations and humanoid robots. SONY Corporation is now owned by SONY Group Corporation which is, among many other things, one of the largest music companies and film studios today.

Sony’s stock was first listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in December 1958. It became a part of the Nikkei 225 stock market index. Sony was listed on the NYSE in September 1970 as the first Japanese company to appear on an any American stock exchange.

Collecting Japanese shares is challenging, especially if you don’t read the language. Luckily modern ones are bilingual showing the text in both Japanese and English. You can read that the certificate illustrated above mentions a capital of 424,000,000 shares of 50 Yen with date of issuance Nov 1, 1975.

I cannot read Japanese but with the help of a dear collector friend I’ve learned to recognize some “phrases” on antique bonds and shares from Japan. The older certificates have to be read in a “right to left and top to bottom” direction. Modern certificates print Japanese from left to right, as is the case here. 

The bold characters in black are ソニー株式会社株券.  

This can be split into three parts:

• ソニー, SONY; 
• 株式会社, kabushikigaisha, Corporation or ‘Co Ltd’ , which is in turn formed by 
• 株式, kabushiki, stock 
• and 会社, kaisha,company; 
• 株券, kabuken, stock certificate. 

Together it says “stock certificate of the SONY Corporation”.  

In the lower right corner, you see the western facsimile signature of President Kazuo Iwama (1919–1982). He was a geophysics engineer lured away from his research job at the seismology research center of Tokyo University by his brother-in-law and SONY co-founder Akio Morita. Kazuo Iwama’s Japanese signature is shown in black right above the lower border: 岩間 和夫.

Japanese shares usually show red seals. These are carved in a traditional formal font style and are hard to interpret by most people. These official seals have a legal impact and must be registered with the local authorities and are used as a formal signature with all kinds of business transactions.

The red rectangular seal is the official company seal with characters written in the traditional way (special font, left to right/top to bottom). It says “seal of the Sony Corporation”. The red round seal has an outer ring mentioning the name of the company, thus ‘SONY Corporation’. The inner circle says ‘seal of the president’.

Finding SONY scripophily is not straightforward. Not often, an ADR stock certificate becomes available on the collectors market. These were printed by the American Bank Note Company in American standard format and with a vignette of a woman encircled by electrons. This specimen ADR dates from 1995. American Depositary Receipts (ADR) are negotiable securities issued by a bank that represents shares in foreign stock. ADRs trade on a American stock exchange. 

As for the Guardians of the Galaxy movie, Sony Pictures Imageworks, a Canadian unit of Sony Pictures Entertainment’s Motion Picture Group, provided some of the visual effects and digital animation for the film.

FL

This post is based on an article written for Scripophily magazine, published by IBSS.

Previous posts

• Reading Japanese dates on stock certificates  
• Exhibition : From Peking to Hankow 

Hidden image emerges from Télémécanique stock certificate

The first time I inspected this 37 year old stock certificate from La Télémécanique Électrique I saw that it was a rather plain print. Somehow, I felt that there was more in the design than one could see at first sight. 

The share is illustrated hereby. You can click the image to enlarge it. You may not detect anything special. Perhaps - and this is the same experience as if you would have the certificate right in front of you in real - some very faint lines in the lower right corner may attract your scrutinizing look. 

Télémécanique was known as a pioneer in industrial automation. Its starts in 1924 when Michel le Gouellec acquired the Manufacture d´Appareillage Électrique in Nanterre, France. That same year MAE inventor André Blanchet files his patent for a contactor. This was an electrically-controlled switch used for switching on and off electric motors, lighting, heating, etc. The company adopted the name Télémécanique Électrique in 1928. 

The company evolved into a developer of process control computers. In 1967 it acquired the Automation Division of MORS, which had developed the MAT 01 industrial computer.  Two years later Télémécanique started introducing their own mini-computers. In 1975 their Solar 16 model was well received and competed against the PDP-11 and the Nova from American competitors DEC and Data General.

So far for a bit of history. Now, I told you that there was more to see on that Télémécanique stock certificate. The nice trick that I am going to tell you about can be used not only for share certificates but also for old prints, maps and even vintage photographs. 

In Reduce Contrast to Reveal a Hidden Underprint, see here, I showed how you can use image editing software to apply reduced contrast to an image with a subtle underprint. Decreasing contrast, yields more visible shades of darker and lighter pixels, with a clearer image as a result. However, that approach did not work in this example. The color print was too faint for these basic contrast functions to be effective.

The software tool I needed now had to offer a a stronger contrast and color altering feature. That tool was GIMP.

GIMP is a free and open-source raster graphics editor used for image editing and many more specialized tasks. It was initially developed at the University of California, Berkeley, and named General Image Manipulation Program. You can download it here at www.gimp.org .

The functionality I used here was located under the "Colors" Menu, named 'Levels'. It makes an image lighter or darker, changes contrast or corrects a predominant color cast (unwanted tint). The graph - a histogram - shown when invoking the function represents the statistical distribution of color values in the image. You can play around with three triangles as sliders: one black for dark tones (Shadows), one grey for midtones (Gamma), and one white for light (Highlights) tones. 

The image above shows the result, a pretty dramatic evolution of my nice scan. It revealed more details of that underprint though most still not clear, except for a clearly identifiable computer shown in the lower right corner. Mission completed !

What has become of the Télémécanique company? Well, under général de Gaulle, the French government had been trying to establish a strong computer industry, one that could thrive independently from the big American computer companies. 

Under that government pressure Télémécanique had to merge its computer division in 1976 with the mini-computer division from Compagnie Internationale pour l'Informatique (CII), into a separate company called Société Européenne de Mini-informatique et Systèmes (SEMS). 

The group Schneider Electric absorbed the remaining company in 1988. Télémécanique is now a major brand within that group involved in industrial automatisation.

F.L.

Previous posts

• Reference catalogue : Bulgarian bonds 
• Book : Dow Jones by Peter Jones 

Google Translate and tiny printer names

Recently I compiled a list of the printing houses identified on the bonds and shares illustrated in the blog. Some of these printers have produced bonds and shares over many decades and in different styles. It shouldn't be a surprise that people start a collection of certificates made by their favorite printer, such as Waterlow & Sons, Richard or Cote Libre. But the quest is not always straightforward.

There is always a possibility that one can't detect a printer name on a certificate. The reason why may be simple. Sometimes the design did not include a printer name. Or, speaking for myself in this case, the name can not be identified because you don't know how to read the language.

This ¥25 million stock certificate for 500,000 Hitachi shares of ¥50 is an undated specimen (見 本) from the 1970s. Its vignettes show the company's logo, a power transformer and an electric locomotive.

As a kid I was mesmerized by the sparkling Hitachi modular Hi-Fi systems on display in a local shop. Hitachi, Ltd., a Japanese multinational conglomerate company, has been active in many fields of technology such as electric and nuclear power installations, electric engines and locomotives, military vehicles, supercomputers and communication technology. Today, Hitachi has about 300,000 employees.

The illustrated Hitachi share shows the name of its printer at the bottom. It's in Japanese. That's out of my depth but there is a work-around.

I once wrote about What you can do with Google Translate on your smartphone. In that article, I showed you how to deal with scripophily catalogs in an unknown language. I tried that same approach, this time on the printer name of the Hitachi share. It did not work.

The name of printer was too small, less than 2cm, about two grains of rice long. The characters, less than 1.5 mm wide, were too small for my camera to be recognized. If I could only provide a larger image. Now, that thought turned out to be a step in the right direction. 

high resolution scan of printer name, taken at 600 dpi

I put the certificate on the image scanner. I set the scanning properties to a high resolution of 600 dots per inch to get a large and clear image of that line of text. I narrowed the scan area to a rectangle surrounding the text. The resulting image, see above, was saved.

Next, I opened the saved image file on the PC screen, and started the Google Translate app on the smartphone. Language parameters were set : 

• Text to translate from : Japanese
• Text to translate into : English

I pointed the camera to the image on the PC screen and pressed the camera icon in the app.

The Google Translate software tried to recognize the words that were captured by the camera. It was necessary to find the right distance between the camera and the computer screen by holding the phone closer to and further from the screen. Then the answer appeared on the phone : Dai Nippon Printing Co., Ltd. Got it !

The text on the share actually shows two words 大日本印刷株式会社 and 印刷. The first part says  Dai Nippon Printing Co., Ltd., the second part - which occurs also in the first part - means 'printing'. I guess the entire line means '(a) printing of the Dai Nippon Printing Co., Ltd.'.

Here is another example of a Dai Nippon Printing certificate. Note that the name of the printer here is written from right to left.

Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. 

100 Shares of 50 Yen, specimen stock certificate, 1968 

The Dai Nippon Printing Co., Ltd., (Dai Nippon Insatsu) was organized in 1935 as a merger between the Shueisha printing house and the Nisshin Printing Co., Ltd. After WWII the company began printing new banknotes for Japan. In 1949 its Enokicho plant started producing share certificates.

What I like about Dai Nippon Printing certificates are the fine patterns and guilloches produced in subtle color tints in the underprint. You can check this blog's printer page to find another Dai Nippon Printing share.

F.L.

Previous posts 

• A new page on this blog : Printers 
• George Bellows's Men of the Docks 

HWPH kicks off '21 with large scripophily auction

Auctioneer Matthias Schmitt has compiled pretty much as 2000 lots of mainly antique bonds and shares for his 58th sale. The online event runs till 30 January, 10 AM. 

Collectors seek these genuine securities for their historic values or artistic features. I'll show you an Italian example from the auction of the first type later, but to start with, here is one of the latter type.

The SA Italiana per l'Impianto e l'Esercizio del Giardino Zoologico in Roma was founded in 1909. Today it is known as Bioparco di Roma. Its shares feature a gorgious vignette of wild animals, and sixteen others interacting with exuberant scrollwork and foliage. Click the image to enlarge. Creator of this Stile Liberty work was Giambattista Conti, aka Giovanni Battista Conti (1878-1970). He was known for his religious works and as an illustrator of children books. He became Director of the Vatican Restoration Institute. This rare certificate for 10 founders' share , lot 773 in the auction, starts at €1,000. 

HWPH is known for its Russian offerings and starts the feast with more than 250 lots from Russia and the former USSR. Two examples : 

• L(ot)116 A 5-shares certificate, 1898, from the Rigaer Commerz-Bank, unusual large underprint  the imperial double-headed eagle holding the arms of the city of Riga, then still part of the Russian Empire.
• A specimen bond from the Soviet Union's 1925 Internal Loan for the Reconstruction of the Economy, multicoloured Art Nouveau design, three vignettess, L151.

One of the Russian highlights is L154, a specimen bond from the 9% railway loan of 1927. The loan was issued to finance railway extensions connecting Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan with the Trans-Siberian Railway. The bond has a denomination of 25 Chervonets, a currency, fully convertible and backed by the gold standard, that was introduced by the Soviet Union to stabilize the hyperinflation. 

A major part of the sale consists of scripophily items related to Germany. Actually there are 700 of them. These can easily be queried online by means of key words like 'Freiburg', yielding 3 results, or 'Leipzig', 16 results. 

Allgemeine Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft, AEG, originated in 1882 when Emil Rathenau acquired licenses to use some of Thomas Edison's lamp patents in Germany. This extremely rare share from 1890, L917, bears Rathenau's facsimile signature. L918, a share in another Berlin company, has Rathenau's original signature. Rathenau died in 1915 when AEG pioneered in the development of aircraft and soon thereafter in film projectors as well. 

Nearly 300 lots represent scripophily from the USA, some picks :

• L1714 shows a share number 1 in The Magirus Corporation of America, issued in 1926, and with vignette of a fire engine. Conrad Dietrich Magirus, born in Ulm, Germany, was the inventor of the mobile fire ladder. Today, the Magirus M68L is the fire engine with the highest turntable ladder in the world with a range of 68 meters.
• The Los Angeles, San Diego and Yuma Railway Company, 1890 stock certificate, L1711, rare
• The tracks of the Virginia and Tennessee Rail Road, a company that played a strategic role for the Confederacy, were destroyed during the American Civil War and later rebuilt. Its $1000 bond from 1853, shows off some of the finest vignettes on US railway securities. L1801, interesting start price at €40.
• A section of 27 Confederate States of America bonds with start prices at €20 to €40, L1618 through 1644

The auction counts no less than eight 'piano' lots : 563, 1023, 1139, 1213, 1567, 1578, 1773 and 1886. This share in the Schomacker Piano Forte Manufacturing Company was issued in 1894. Pianists and high society figures like President Ulysses S. Grant preferred these fine and award-winning instruments. Schomacker pianos were called the “Gold String” pianos. H. W. Gray, who signed this share as President, patented a technique wherein the piano strings were gold plated through a process called electro-plating. The other signature we see here is the one of Henry C. Schomacker, son of Johan Heinrich Schomacker, founder of the business. L1773 

The offerings present bonds and shares from many more countries. Let me further mention some more noteworthy collectibles :

• UK : One of the oldest Cunard Steam-Ship Company shares seen, 1888, with ship vignette, L532
• Italy : Gucci Group NV, Dutch Gulden specimen stock certificate , vignettes of the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence, and Gucci craftsman inspecting a Gucci handbag, L598
• Czechoslovakia : L727, Prvni Pražský Měštanský Pivovor, freely translated : The First Prague Civic Brewery, 1930, multicolor print with brewing vignetttes and of course, a drinking King
• The sale includes a nice selection of Egyptian scripophily.

The Monte di Pietà, a church-run lending institution founded in Italy's 15th century, became a model for many charity institutions. Called “Monte’s” these organizations obtained their funds by means of bonds called “Luoghi di Monte” and evolved into banks and lending institutions. The bonds were registered, and guaranteed the investor a type of life annuity. This Monte non vacabile del Sale della Città di Firenze was issued as early as 1699! The loan was guaranteed by income from taxes on salt (Sale) and bears the arms of the House of Medici. L895 

Of course, there is much more to tell, but the best way is to see for yourself. Here are the auction details:

• Date : 30 Januari 2021, online auction
• Further info and catalogs, see here on HWPH. 
• Live bidding is possible through Invaluable.com, see here, where you can find high quality images of the lots.

F.L.

PS : Did you like this post ? Thank you for sharing it on you favorite social media channel !

Archives International Auctions sale features legendary Hammond Organ Company

Deep Purple's Child in Time, Procul Harum's A Whiter Shade of Pale, Easy Livin' from Uriah Heep, and The Great Gig In The Sky written by Pink Floyd, all these songs have in common the greatest of all organs: a Hammond.

A specimen stock certificate from the legendary Hammond Organ Company is now to be auctioned in Archives International Auctions' upcoming sale (lot 605). AIA's 41th auction features nearly 1,100 U.S. & worldwide scripophily lots, largely from the American Banknote Company archives. Included as well are historic and security printing ephemera, and banknotes.

The company was organized in 1928 as the Hammond Clock Company by Laurens Hammond. Together with John M Hanert, Hammond invented an electromechanical pipeless organ. They sold it to churches as a lower-cost alternative to a wind-driven pipe organ. By means of an ingenious system of mechanically driven tone weels, electromagnetic pick-ups and drawbar controllers, a Hammond organ could create millions of potential sounds. Soon production rose to several hundreds per month. Automaker Henry Ford was one of Hammond's first customers. The company became the Hammond Instrument Company in 1937. Models equipped with bass pedals and harmonic percussion features were well received in small jazz bands.

In 1953 the company adopted the name Hammond Organ Company. The Hammond organ became even more popular when used with a Leslie speaker, a combined amplifier with rotating loudspeakers. Jazz virtuoso Jimmy Smith used the organ in new ways and became the star on stage like a modern guitar hero. In 1967, after the acquisition of glove manufacturer Wells Lamont, the parent company became the Hammond Corporation, and the Hammond Organ Company became its division. 

The sales' scripophily section features railroad, automobile and aviation certificates. More topics include banking & finance, brewery and alcohol related certificates, mining, utilities, navigation, sports, and state and municipal bonds of several countries.

Submarine Monitor Company of New York

100 shares of $10, 1885

lot 626 in the auction

Auction details

• Date : May 16, 2017
• Place : Fort Lee, NJ 
• Further info : see here, virtual catalogue see there and PDF version here 

F.L.

What is a share certificate, what is a stock certificate ?

Share certificates are no testimonies of charity, nor are stock certificates a special kind of inventory lists. But what are they? If you are not really into finance, you might not know what these objects stand for. 

The Millar Loom Company Limited

Share certificate for 100 shares of £1, printed by Howard and Jones, London

double-click image to enlarge

-

The Millar Loom Co Ltd was formed to buy patents for a new type of loom.

This particular share issued in 1898 mentions that Lieutenant-Colonel Ernest Richard Hope Torin
is the Registered Proprietor of the certificate. From 1874 to 1884 he served 
with the 13th Hussars cavalry (Baden-Powell) in India and Afghanistan . 

You can see Torin's picture here. 

Synonyms

Both terms, share certificate and stock certificate, mean the same. They are synonyms. The former is more widely used in Commonwealth of Nations countries (e.g. UK, Canada, Australia, India), the latter is preferred in the US. The word stock refers to the capital stock of a company.

Here are the terms in some other languages :

aandeel , action, actie, Aktie, részvény, azione, acción, ação, osake, acțiune, hlutabréf, hisse senedi, aktiebrev, АКЦИЯ, АКЦIA, μετοχή, תעודת מניה, शेयर, 股權證書, 株券, 주권 , شهادة الأسهم

Just like in English, probably every language has its own synonyms. In Germany we speak of Aktie and Anteilschein, in France of action, part or titre, in Swedish aktie and aktiebref, in Spain acción, parte and cédula.

Minas de Cármenes Sociedad Anonima

Share of 500 Pesetas, série A, Gijon, 1903

-

A bearer share certificate, in Spanish:acción al portador, 

is issued without mentioning the shareholder's name. 

The lower half of the certificate shows 32 dividend coupons.

Ownership in a company

In order to explain what these certificates are, I must tell you first about companies. Suppose you want to start a business. Then you will need an amount of money to get your business up and running. You likely will have to lease or invest in business assets, pay for work or services, buy consumer goods, and lots of other things.

But your financial resources may not be sufficient; or, you might want to share the investment risk with others. These are the main reasons why you form a joint-stock company. In that case, you allow others to participate when they co-invest in your company. In return they receive share certificates in your company in proportion to the amount invested. So, a share certificate represents ownership in a company.

Ypersche Weverij Naamloze Vennootschap

Le Textile Yprois Société Anonyme

English : Ypres Textile Company

Registered founder's share, 1924

-

Registered shares mention the name of the shareholder,  

which is also recorded in the company's shareholders register.

It is an effective method for the company to stay informed 

about its shareholders.

Physical papers

A share certificate is a piece of paper that mentions the name of the company, the number of shares owned, the date of issue and an identification number. To avoid forgery, their designs contain a number of security features such as legal signatures of company officers, corporate seals, water marks, engine turned designs, etc.
Share certificates were created decades and even centuries ago. The lucky ones that have survived such a long, often remarkable journey through time are now residing comfortable with other companions in a collection or even a museum. Now, share certificates have mostly been replaced by electronic accounts in today's financial networks.

NV Tagalsch  Prauwenveer

Registered share of 600 Gulden, Batavia (Jakarta), 1902

- 

The company operated a proa ferry and ship unloading service

 at Tegal at the north coast of Central Java. 

The rear side (right image) tells us that the share 

was transferred to a new owner in 1920 and later in 1938. 

double-click image to enlarge

Being a shareholder

Shareholders are only liable for the company's debts to the value of their shares. This concept of limited liability is one of the success factors of this type of business organization. Shareholders have voting rights at the company's shareholder meetings. And they can expect to receive a proportional share in the company's profits. When the company dissolves, they receive a proportional share of the liquidation proceeds.

Walther Electronic Aktiengesellschaft

1 Share of 50 DM, issued Gerstetten 1979, with corresponding dividend coupon sheet

This company originates from 1886 when it started manufacturing tools and guns. 

In the 1970s Walther produced electronic calculators and text processors.

-

Many German shares are bearer shares stating that Der Inhaber dieser Aktie 

ist bei der Aktiengesellschaft nach Massgabe der Satzung als Aktionär beteiligt,

which means that the owner (Inhaber) of this share is a shareholder 

of the company in accordance with the company's rules. 

Registered versus Bearer 

When the name of the shareholder is registered in the company's share register, the issued certificate will state his/her name and therefore is called a registered certificate. When it is sold, the name of its owner will be replaced in the company's share register. Either a new share will be issued for the new owner and the old certificate will be cancelled, or the name of the previous owner will be overwritten on the certificate, and a statement of ownership transfer is written on the rear.
Bearer shares, on the other hand, do not mention the owner's name. These are owned by an anonymous "bearer". Such shares can be sold to another party without the knowledge of the company. Bearer certificates have been popular because they were easy to sell (without transfer taxes).

Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad Company

Stock certificate for 100 shares issued in 1903 to Henry Clews & Co.

- 

Almost all American stock certificates are "registered" and state that 

shares are transferable only on the books of the company in person or by attorney...

Dividends

A company usually distributes a fraction of its profits among its shareholders. A certain amount for each share will then be allocated. The income received from the ownership of shares is called a dividend.

• In case of a registered share certificate, only the officially registered shareholder receives dividend payments. Dividend payments were often written on the rear side of the certificate. 
• Bearer certificates have a sheet of dividend coupons. In return for a clipped coupon, a shareholder receives a dividend payment. By counting the number of missing coupons, one can tell how many dividends have been paid out.

Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (VOC)

In 2010 Ruben Schalk, history student at the Universiteit Utrecht, 

discovered the so far oldest share in the world in the Westfries Archief in Hoorn. 

The certificate dates from September 9th, 1606. 

The second page records the payments of dividend.

Source: Wikipedia.

Amazing, exotic and even weird species

The world of share certificates would certainly have interested Alexander von Humboldt whose work on botanical geography laid the foundation for the field of biogeography. As centuries passed, share certificates adapted to new political, economical and regional conditions and evolved into several types (founding shares, preference shares, et cetera) and local varieties. 

Do they teach scripogeography at Oxford ?

Stationery Industries (Société Anonyme Egyptienne)

Titre Nominatif de 25 Actions de L.E.4

English: Registered certificate for 25 shares of 4 Egyptian Pounds

Alexandria, 1956

-

This "hybrid" share certificate has some bizarre characteristics. 

a) It is a registered certificate, yet there is a dividend coupon sheet attached 

(partly visible in the upper image). 

b) Although it is a registered certificate, the name of the registered shareholder is not mentioned.

Was this an error in the print design?

c) Even though the first owner is unmentioned,  we see on the rear side 

dates (date de la cession) and names of new owners for two share transfers (lower image).

F.L.

Related links

• Book : Shares & Co. - A journey through the world of securities and the history of capitalism, published by Wertpapierwelt
• International Bond and Share Society 
• Wikipedia's Joint-stock-company 
• What is Scripophily ? 

PS 😉 : Who is in 2016 the most known person in the world ? Tip: it is a shareholder.

Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts, Inc.

This certificate looks like and is produced in the same way as a share certificate, but it isn't one. 

It is a specimen certificate. More about specimens in Euratom specimen or proof ?

Image courtesy : Scripophily.com 

Uncharted : Seaco Computer Display Incorporated

The SEACO Computer Display company is a bit of a mystery to me. I was hoping that someone could tell me more about its history.

The style of the stock certificate matches the 1960s. The company name, or its variant with the hyphen, SEACO Computer-Display, does not appear in the '68 volume of Moody's Manual of Industrial Securities. Possibly later editions contain this company profile. Who can tell ?

In the 1970s this Texas-based organization produced microfiche readers and artwork generators, devices that could convert computer data, lettering and digital drawings, to microfiche or microfilm. What puzzles me is the usage of the word Computer in the company name. 

When was this business founded and by whom? Did it merge into a successor ?

Was the company involved in design or manufacturing of minicomputers or terminals ?

F.L.

Reading Japanese dates on stock certificates

Japanese stock certificates are known for their elegant designs. Produced as colorful high quality prints, these securities often show little masterpieces. A tempting theme to collect. For classification purposes, besides the name of the paper's issuer you also need to know the certificate's issue date. Many of us however are not familiar with the Japanese language and writing system. In this post, I'll show you how you can recognize and read dates on your Japanese shares.

Nippon Shoji Shintaku Kabushiki Kaisha
in English: The Japan Commercial Investment & Trust Co., Ltd.
10 Shares of 50 Yen, Osaka 1917
A minority of Japanese stock certificates are bilingual (Japanese-English). 
double-click image to enlarge
Source: HWPH

It requires only a few steps to learn how to read Japanese dates

That is correct. You need to :

• recognize the year, month and day characters
• know how Japanese numbers are composed
• know about formal numbers
• understand the date system
• and read in the right direction.

The combination of each one of these skills seems to make the task tough. But each step is easy to learn. Stay with me all the way down. I'll guide you step by step through the process. At the end of this post I will congratulate you because you will have mastered a new skill : reading Japanese dates !

明 治 元 年

first year of the Meiji reign : 1868

The year, month and day characters in the common date format

The date 2014年04月30日 is written in the modern commonly used date format. It stands for April 30, 2014. The example shows that, together with Hindu-Arabic numerals, also Japanese characters are used. These characters stand for year, month and day, and it is important you can recognize them :

• year : 年
• month of year : 月
• day of month :日

In Japanese, the combination of this charachters form the word 年月日 'date'.

How to read Japanese numbers

You can write numbers in Japanese in two ways: with Hindu-Arabic numerals (1, 2, ..) , as in the date example above, or with Chinese numerals ( 一, 二 , ...). Guess what : old Japanese shares use the Chinese numerals for indicating the year, the month of the year and the day of the month. The table below shows the numbers 1 to 10. Look at the first two columns and for the moment just ignore the last two columns. 

double-click image to enlarge

As you notice, in Japanese, there is a special character for the number 10 (and also for 100, 1000, et cetera). Watch out now, to form a Japanese number larger than ten you need to apply the following rule :

If a number is followed by a smaller number, add both.

If a number is followed by a larger number, multiply them.

Some examples : 

• 15 is written as  十五 ( 10 + 5 )
• 36 is written as 三 十 六 ( 3 x 10 ) + 6
• 23 is written as 二十三 ( 2 x 10 ) + 3
• 99 is written as  九十九 ( 9 x 10 ) + 9

This is fun, isn't it ? Now, you can already read Japanese numbers.

Sony Kabushiki Kaisha - Sony Corporation
50 Shares of 50 Yen, specimen, 1970
Seal, Japanese (at left) and Western (at right)
 facsimile signatures of co-founder Masaru Ibuka

You too can understand the nengō date system

The common date format is not used on Japanese stocks and bonds, except for some recent certificates. In Japan, other date systems exist and the one we need is the nengō date system ( 'nen' or 年 means year). It is the official system for dating years used in virtually all government and private business.

Historically, Japanese dates were expressed as years of a named era called a nengō. The system was introduced from China around the 7th century. With the advent of modern Japan under the emperor Meiji, the eras have been tied to the reign of the current emperor since 1868. When emperor Hirohito ascended the throne on 25 Dec 1926, he chose the name Shōwa for his reign title. Therefore 1926 was the first year of Shōwa. Shōwa 2 represents 1927 and so on.  Here is an overview of the modern eras :

• Meiji era, characters : 明 治 , first year of reign : 1868
• Taishō era, characters :  大 正 , first year of reign : 1912
• Shōwa era, characters :  昭 和 , first year of reign : 1926
• Heisei era, characters :   平 成 , first year of reign : 1989

It is important that you can recognize these era names.

In Japanese writing, a specific nengō year starts with the emperor's era name followed by the year of the emperor's reign and ends with the year character 年. Two examples:

• 昭 和 三 十 六 年  is Shōwa 36 (3x10+6), the 36th year in the Shōwa reign
•  大 正 十 五 年 is Taishō 15 (10+5), the 15th year in the Taishō reign

For indicating the first year of reign, the "first" character 元 is used.
So,  明 治 元 年 indicates the first year in the Meiji reign, which corresponds to 1868.

Trinitron and Bravia televisions, Betamax videocassettes, Walkman and Discman, Handycam, Vaio laptops and Playstation consoles. Sony was founded as Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo Corporation (Totsuko) in 1946. In 1955 Sony was chosen as the new brand name derived from the Latin "Sonus" (sonic) and the American "Sonny", a term used to call a boy or young man in a familiar way. The first Sony-branded product, the TR-55 transistor radio, appeared in 1955. The name Sony was easy to pronounce everywhere in the world.  The company name was changed into Sony in 1958. At the time, it was rarely seen that a Japanese company used Roman letters to spell its name instead of the traditional Kanji characters.

About the mill and the arcade game industry

"That the Money of Account, to correspond with the division of coins, .. 

proceed in a decimal ratio, agreeably to the forms and manner following, viz.

• Mills: The lowest money of accompt, of which one thousand shall be equal to the federal dollar, or money unit __ 0.001
• Cents: The highest copper piece, of which one hundred shall be equal to the dollar __ 0.010
• Dimes: The lowest silver coin, ten of which shall be equal to the dollar ... 0.100
• Dollar: The highest silver coin __ 1.000 "

Source : Journals of the Continental Congress, Tuesday August 8, 1786

The US mill currency

The term mill was used for the first time by the Continental Congress in 1786, only 10 years after the country's Declaration of Independence. One mill represented 1⁄1,000 of a dollar or 0.1¢. As such, the mill - also written as mil - was never released as an official coin or note. 

During the 1930s, the Great Depression period, some cities and a number of American states introduced sales tax tokens, expressed in cents but also in mills. Most of these tokens were produced in denominations for one mill, one and a half mills, two mills and five mills. They were struck in aluminium, brass, copper, zinc, pewter or produced from plastic, wood and even cardboard. After the 1960s virtually none were made anymore.

Missouri 5 mills sales tax token in zinc
Notice the map of Missouri in the design

It is interesting to know how these tokens were used. Shopkeepers and merchants had to pay sales taxes to the state on the sales amount realized in a day. On small sums, e.g. a 10c purchase for a chocolate bar, it was difficult to tax the shopper a percentage of the sales price as there were no coins for such small amounts. Sales tax tokens form the solution. Now, the merchant gave back change in mill tokens and the shopper could pay its next purchase with regular coins and taxes with tokens. This enabled the shopkeeper to collect taxes on each transaction.

No banknotes, no coins, but scripophily !

No official banknotes nor coins have been issued in the mill currency unit. But apparently there are such stock certificates. American stock certificates often mention the official par value, the initial selling price of a single share of stock. One can find certificates of $100 par value, $1 par value, 1ct par value, and in other combinations as well. Lots of companies issued stock mentioning a par value of $.001, the equivalent of a mil. Yet, very few securities actually mention the mil denomination. Here is an example from the Game-A-Tron Corporation, a producer of computer-controlled arcade games.

detail from a Game-A-Tron stock certificate stating the ownership of

shares of One half (1/2) mil Par Value Capital Stock

double-click image to enlarge

The arcade game industry
Early mechanical arcade games were already installed in the 1920s in public places like bars and amusement parks. Fortune telling and pinball machines are examples of these coin-operated entertainment machines. In the 1960s new types of electro-mechanical arcade games were introduced such as Sega's Periscope : a submarine simulator and light gun shooter, see here. By the 1970s a video terminal was introduced in the concept. In 1972 Atari releases Pong, see there, a two-dimensional table tennis video game and became the first commercially successful video game.

Photo of hybrid arcade game Galaga and Ms. Pac Man machine
Source: Brian Katt at the English language Wikipedia

These early arcade machines were designed around discrete logic circuits comprising each element of the game itself. These so-called "finite-state machines" perform a predetermined sequence of actions depending on a sequence of events with which they are presented. Some of these arcade games became extremely popular. In 1978 the Japanese Taito Corporation launched Space Invaders. The game caused a national shortage of 100 yen coins in Japan, leading to a production increase of coins to meet demand for the game. 

Game-A-Tron Corporation
Shares of 1/2 mil par value, 1981
double-click to enlarge image