Weighing scale
The balance (also balance scale, beam balance and laboratory balance) was the first mass measuring instrument invented. In its traditional form, it consists of a pivoted horizontal lever with arms of equal lengththe beamand a weighing pan suspended from each arm (hence the plural name ""scales" for a weighing instrument). The unknown mass is placed in one pan and standard masses are added to the other pan until the beam is as close to equilibrium as possible. In precision balances, a more accurate determination of the mass is given by the position of a sliding mass moved along a graduated scale. Technically, a balance compares weight rather than mass, but, in a given gravitational field (such as Earth's gravity), the weight of an object is proportional to its mass, so the standard masses used with balances are usually labeled in units of mass (e.g. g or kg).
History of science and technology in Japan
Boss Corporation's DD-2 Digital Delay, released in 1983, was the world's first digital delay effects unit in stomp box form. It uses a custom integrated circuit (IC) chip that was originally developed for Roland Corporation's SDE-3000 rack delay unit. It was succeeded by the DD-3 Digital Delay in 1986. Boss Corporation's RV-2 Digital Reverb, released in 1987, was the world's first digital reverb pedal. It used a new custom DSP processor developed by Boss, originally for the RRV-10 Digital Reverb in the Micro Rack series.Yamaha developed an early multi-voice polyphonic synthesizer, the Yamaha GX-1, in 1973. In 1974, Roland Corporation released the EP-30, the first touch-sensitive electronic keyboard. Roland released an early polyphonic string synthesizer, the Roland RS-202, in 1975, followed by the Roland RS-202 in 1976.In 1973, Yamaha licensed the algorithms for frequency modulation synthesis (FM synthesis) from John Chowning, who had experimented with it at Stanford University since 1971. Yamaha's engineers began adapting Chowning's algorithm for use in a commercial digital synthesizer, adding improvements such as the "key scaling" method to avoid the introduction of distortion that normally occurred in analog systems during frequency modulation. In the 1970s, Yamaha were granted a number of patents, under the company's former name "Nippon Gakki Seizo Kabushiki Kaisha", evolving Chowning's early work on FM synthesis technology. Yamaha built the first prototype digital synthesizer in 1974.