Tadahiro Sekimoto

Tadahiro Sekimoto ( Japanese 関 関 忠 弘 , Sekimoto Tadahiro ; born November 14, 1926 in Hyōgo Prefecture ; † November 11, 2007 ) was a Japanese telecommunications engineer and former president of the NEC Corporation .

Sekimoto graduated from Tokyo University with a bachelor's degree in physics in 1948 and then entered the NEC research laboratories, where he became head of basic research in 1965. In 1962 he received his doctorate in engineering from the University of Tokyo. After spending two years at COMSAT in Washington DC from 1965, he headed the NEC communications research laboratory from 1967. In 1972 he became manager of the transmission division and in 1974 he was promoted to the board. In 1977 he became Senior Vice President and in 1978 Executive Vice President responsible for sales in Japan. In 1980 he became president of NEC and from 1994 to 1998 he was on the board of directors. In 1998 he resigned in response to the fact that NEC overcharged the Japanese Ministry of Defense. However, he remained a consultant to NEC until he resigned from it in 2002 because he did not agree that NEC spun off its electronics division as NEC Electronics.

At NEC, he developed pulse code modulation to the point of application maturity, including the development of the associated circuits. In the 1960s he developed the SPADE technology which was used for satellite communication and data transmission ( Intelsat ). SPADE stands for Single-channel-per-carrier pulse-code-modulated multiple-access demand-assignment equipment . A time division multiplexing process (TDMA) and automatic routing system developed by him were used in satellite communication and later in mobile communications. During his time as President of NEC in the 1980s, NEC rose to become one of the world's largest suppliers of computers and semiconductors.

He was director of the Japanese Institute for International Socio-Economic Studies (IISE) and, from 1992 to 1997, deputy chairman of the advisory board of Keidanren, the largest corporate lobby group in Japan.

In 2004 he received the IEEE Medal of Honor and he received the IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal and the Edwin Howard Armstrong Award from the IEEE Communications Society. He was also a Life Fellow of the IEEE . He was an external member of the National Academy of Engineering . Sekimoto was a Knight of the Legion of Honor and KBE . In Japan he received the Medal of Honor with Purple Ribbon and the Order of the Sacred Treasure . He held 35 Japanese and 5 foreign patents.

Web links

• Obituary in the New York Times, November 16, 2007 by Martin Fackler
• Engineering and Technology History Wiki