History Of The Playstatio . Sony got its start in 1946, just after World War II , when Masaru Ibuka founded an electronics store in a bombed-out department store in Tokyo. Among other achievements, they were responsible for building Japan's very first tape recorder. Back then, the company was known as "Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo"; they changed their name to Sony in 1958 after expanding. The name Sony comes from the mixture of the Latin word "Sonus" (meaning sonic or sound) and the American term "Sonny" (colloquialism for a young boy). With the advent of the electronic component known as the transistor, Sony was able to manufacture small, portable radios that it sold to American teenagers. Over the years Sony has been responsible for many of the common devices we've been using in our day to day lives, such as floppy discs, compact discs, Blu-Ray, and of course the Walkman, the first personal portable tape player. They were also responsib...