Shigeichi Negishi.Photo:Hiroko Yoda
Hiroko Yoda
Shigeichi Negishi, the man who invented the modern karaoke machine, has died at age 100.
The Japanese businessman died on Jan. 26 after a fall, Negishi’s daughter Atsumi Takano said, perThe Wall Street Journal.
WSJreporter Matt Alt was one of the first to share the news of Negishi’s death onX(formerly Twitter), noting that Negishi’s family had asked him to share the news.
“Farewell to another legend: Shigeichi Negishi, inventor of karaoke, has died age 100,” wrote Alt, who interviewed the Tokyo native in 2018. “By automating the sing-along, he earned the enmity of performers who saw his machine as a threat to their jobs. It’s an eerie precursor of the debate surrounding AI’s impact on artists today.”
The salesman, who made a living at his tech company Nichiden Kogyo, produced the first version of the karaoke machine in 1967, when he was already in his 40s. Negishi originally called it a “Sparko Box,” and the first seed for the idea came after one of his employees jokingly insulted his singing voice.
Shigeichi Negishi.Hiroko Yoda
In his 2018 interview with Alt — who is the author ofPure Invention— Negishi recalled the engineer calling out to him as he sang to himself down the hallway, “You aren’t a very good singer, Mr. Negishi!”
According to Alt, Negishi immediately brought the “Sparko Box” — named for the flashing lights within a later design of the machine — home to his family and tested it with all his kids, giving them each a chance to sing.
“I still remember how shocked and thrilled all of us were hearing our voices come out of the speaker,” his daughter recalled.
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Although Negishi is now credited with creating the machine, musician Daisuke Inoue waslong thought to be the grandfather of karaoke, although his version was invented independently in 1971, perNPR.
Next, Negishi hit the road, becoming a traveling salesman as he attempted to sell Sparko Boxes to bars, hotels, restaurants and any other venue he could think of. By the end of his career, he had sold around 8,000 devices, theWall Street Journalreported.
Negishi never patented the device, citing Japan’s difficult patenting process of the 1960s as the main reason why. But according to Takano, “truly, the patent never bothered him.”
source: people.com
