Yoshiro Nakamatsu
Nakamatsu claims IBM reached licensing agreements with him in the late 1970s. He also claims to have licensed his floppy disk to IBM in 1979, but that the details are "confidential". An IBM spokesman, Mac Jeffery, confirmed that the company did license some of his patents, but claimed they were not for the floppy disk, which he claimed IBM invented on its own. Another IBM spokesman, Brian Doyle, said they licensed 14 patents from Nakamatsu, but also claimed that they do not have anything to do with the floppy disk.
History of science and technology in Japan
The Roland D-50 is a polyphonic 61-key digital synthesizer, produced by Roland and released in 1987. Its features include Linear Arithmetic synthesis, on-board effects, a joystick for data manipulation, and an analogue synthesis-styled layout design. It was also produced in a rack-mount variant design, the D-550 (1987–1990), with almost 450 user-adjustable parameters. The D-50 saw widespread use in popular music, with a distinctive sound that largely defined popular late 1980s music. Today, the D-50 is still highly popular as affordable vintage synth. It has the highest score by users of all synths at VintageSynth. The D-50 was the first affordable synthesizer to combine sample playback with digital synthesis, a process that Roland called Linear Arithmetic synthesis.What may have been the first floppy disk, or magnetic disk sheet, was invented by Yoshiro Nakamatsu at the Tokyo Imperial University in 1950. He received a Japanese patent in 1952, and a 1958 American patent, for a magnetic disk record sheet. Nippon Columbia planned to commercialized his magnetic disc sheet recorder in 1960. He licensed a number of patents to IBM, reaching licensing agreements with them in the 1970s.