Dr. Masahiro Yanagisawa participated in the early development of various aspects of HDD technology in Japan, with a consortium of companies that included NTT (Nippon Telephone and Telegraph), NEC, Fujitsu, and Hitachi. He worked at NEC, where he started in 1973, working on plated and sputtered thin-film media; he also made critical discoveries in protective overcoats and lubricants while working on these projects under the auspices of the consortium. This consortium produced a prototype drive called a PATTY drive, an 8-inch diameter disk drive using plated CoNiP (cobalt – nickel – phosphorus) media. This drive is historically very important in that US companies like IBM keenly felt the competition in the HDD field coming from Japan, especially with this consortium. Dr. Yanagisawa is one of the few people still left who has detailed knowledge of HDD development in Japan during the 1970s and 1980s. The development under this consortium in Japan precipitated the formation of the NSIC (National Storage Industry Consortium), led by IBM and joined by most HDD and component manufacturers in the US. They funded a collaborative effort between industry and several key universities to develop new technologies and create industry roadmaps.
Dr. Yanagisawa went on to publish many papers on the use of sputtered thin-film media, on CoPt-based alloys, and on groundbreaking studies of various lubricant types for use with thin-film media. These papers in the late 1970s and early 1980s had a significant influence on the development of thin-film media technology in the US.
After spending 36 years at NEC, Dr. Yanagisawa entered academia, working at Waseda University, where he continued fundamental research in tribology and developed unique measurement techniques, such as surface-enhanced Raman Spectroscopy (SERS).
The interview is conducted in Japanese, and English translation is available in the transcript.
Interviewed by Ron Dennison on 2025-12-03
© Computer History Museum
Note: Transcripts represent what was said in the interview. However, to enhance meaning or add clarification, interviewees have the opportunity to modify this text afterward. This may result in discrepancies between the transcript and the video. Please refer to the transcript for further information – http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/300000309
Catalog number: 300000310
Acquisition number: 2024.0229
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