Founding and early years The company was established by in 1875. During the 1890s and 1900s, Shimadzu experienced rapid growth that occurred at the same time as higher education grew in Japan.
X-ray devices, the
spectrum camera, the
electron microscope, and the
gas chromatograph were developed and commercialized in advance of other Japanese companies. Shimadzu became a corporation in 1917. Genzo Shimadzu Sr's son Genzo Shimadzu Jr was the second president of the company and also founded battery manufacturer
GS (now GS Yuasa) in 1917.
Developments The company also developed, in 2001, an
ultra-high speed video camera, HyperVision HPV-1, which is capable of recording at 1,000,000
FPS, while in 2016 it released the HyperVision HPV-X2, a camera that achieves ultra-high-speed continuous recording at 10 million frames per second at Full Pixel Resolution. Other products developed by Shimadzu include
head-mounted displays. The company had revenue of
¥264.048 billion yen (
$2.8 billion USD) in
FY 2012, with 10,395 employees as of March 31, 2013. ==Acquisition history==