Informacion recibida de nuestro colaborador Ikeda (Manuel, a ver si nos
lo traduces para poner en la revista :)
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Hello, everybody over there in Europe! It's me, Ikeda. I went to the
MSX&PC fair in Tilburg and I would like to thank everybody for their
support.
Recently, I received the two questions below from ASCII via mr. Yokoi of
Frontline.
1) Do you know a person by the name of Manuel Bilderbeek? He's a Dutchman
(we think).
2) Is it true that most of the foreign MSX users don't know that "MSX" is
an abbreviation that stands for Matsushita/Sony?
Since I think that most of the non-Japanese MSX users don't know the
meaning of this abbreviation, I would like to explain it to you.
Quite some time ago, when Kazuhiko Nishi was still the vice-president of
the Microsoft- company, he provided miscellaneous personal computers with
the Microsoft BASIC- language. It was then, that Nishi started thinking:
"Why should it be necessary to provide every personal computer with
BASIC? It's bothersome, really.". There, Nishi came up with something.
"That's it! If the hardware of all the personal computers would be the
same, the necessity of providing every single computer with BASIC will
disappear!", he thought.
Then, he discussed the subject with mr. Matsushita from the Matsushita
Electronics company, and they started the research in order to develop a
new personal computer. The personal computer developed by the Taiwanese
company Spectravideo caught their attention, but since the basic
abilities were low, they improved the Spectravideo-computer and
developed a new system. They gave this system the name "MNX". M stood for
the M of Matsushita, N stood for the N of Nishi and the X was standing
for the unlimited power.
However, since the name of MNX was already registered by then, the name
couldn't be used. Since the company that was going to handle the sales of
the new computer was Sony, the name was changed into "MSX", of which the
S stood for Sony. The M still stood for Matsushita Electronics.
Nishi negotiated with miscellaneous companies in order to start the sale
of the MSX. During the negotiations with Yamaha, they said:"M is the M of
Matsushita Electronics, S is the S of Sony and X is the sign for Yamaha,
the third participating company!". Successively, during the negotiations
with Sanyo, the same kind of thing was said:"M is the M of Matsushita
Electronics, S is the S of Sony and X stands for Sanyo!". Nishi continued
succeeding in his negotiations in this way. The result was, that during
the press conference after the presentation of the MSX-system, the names
associated with the development of MSX had become a total of thirteen
companies.
Afterwards, Nishi said to Bill Gates: "MSX stands for the company of
Microsoft.". That's why in foreign countries people started thinking that
MSX was the abbreviation for "MicroSoft eXchanging".
The above is what Nishi said in a lecture he gave at the MSX Den-Yu land
fair that was opened in August, 1999. The same story is also written in
the book below:
The article "The samurai of electronic thinking" ("Dennou no
samuraitachi") published in "Business Japan, April 1997" issued by the
Business Japan company.
Kazuhiko Nishi, I'm sorry I forgot the detailed information about the
publisher etc.
Written by Kuniji Ikeda
Translated by Rieks Warendorp Torringa
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CLUB HNOSTAR MSX - hnostar(_en_)ctv(_punto_)es -
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Last update: 3 June 2000 - ICQ Number: 25855133
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