The roots of Toyota Motor Corporation and the Toyota group of companies can be traced back to an invention by my grandfather, Sakichi Toyoda: an automatic power loom. Japan was a relatively poor country at the time, and Sakichi devoted his life to the development of weaving devices that brought the potential for greater prosperity. With the help of his son, Kiichiro, and his employees -- and after much trial and error -- he created an automatic loom called the Type G in the 1920s.
Shoichiro Toyoda
Sakichi sold the patent on the Type G to Platt Brothers & Co. of the U.K., then the world's largest textile machinery manufacturer, for 100,000 pounds. About 12 years ago, the loom was placed on permanent display at the Science Museum in London, which also houses James Watt's steam engine and other inventions that drove the Industrial Revolution.
