ME (Medical Electronics or Medical Engineering) is the union of medicine and engineering.
ME is a common abbreviation in recent years but the founders of Nihon Kohden began working in medical electronics around 1945, long before this phrase was born.
The neuromuscular tissue of a small bird was the impetus behind the founding of Nihon Kohden.
The late Dr. Yoshio Ogino, founder of Nihon Kohden, was doing research in electrical engineering when one day he happened to see an experiment involving stimulation of the neuromuscular tissue of a small bird. He was struck by the wonder of biology and remarked that “to measure part of a living body requires several hundred times the sensitivity and at least two decimal places more than the equipment developed by the leading electrical engineering experts in Japan.”
He wondered if it might be possible to apply a higher level of engineering to the subtleties of biology and study the human body.
And furthermore, if this union of medicine and engineering could be used for saving human life. With this powerful inspiration, he studied medicine and in August 1951 founded Nihon Kohden.
With the unshakable conviction that “curing disease is something that transcends politics and national borders, and we will never have any regret putting all our energy into this goal.”
Nihon Kohden produced a number of state of the art medical electronic instruments. As medicine evolved, Nihon Kohden’s products branched out into many areas. However, the original vision did not change and it still inspires the Company’s engineers.
When the Company was founded, several of the founding members gathered at the house of the founder to decide on a Company name. As the founder had many books regarding the photoelectric effect and electron optics on his shelves, they suggested the name Kohden, which combines the Japanese characters for light and electricity.
The founder, who was interested in the possibilities for developing new technologies that combined electronics and optics, added the words Nihon (Japan) and Kougyou (Industry) to create the name Nihon Kohden Kougyou.
The Corporate Symbol graphically expresses the founding philosophy of Nihon Kohden. The curved line at the bottom of the corporate symbol represents the horizon, from which the light beaming from a lighthouse extends up into the sky, visually expressing Nihon Kohden’s global development, and its contribution to humanity and the world, today and in the future.
The current Logo was adopted together with the Corporate Symbol in 1992 to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Nihon Kohden.
By combining a simple and functional typeface with the Corporate Symbol, the Logo is clean and easy to read and matches Nihon Kohden's image.
[ History of the Nihon Kohden Logo ]
The Corporate Color is Kohden Blue, which represents the blue of the sky and sea in the Corporate Symbol, in which the light beaming from a lighthouse extends from the horizon up into the sky.
