In 1918 Konosuke Matsushita set up a company that he called Matsushita. At first he traded from the upstairs rooms of his two storey house where he manufactured electric products. Many years later the products were branded Panasonic.

It wasnt long before Panasonic outgrew the upstairs of his house and it needed to move to a large workshop in 1920 which allowed them to make additional products. Virtually from the beginning Panasonics products were innovative, well designed, high quality and at affordable prices. One of the initial products that Panasonic made was a double adaptor which made it possible to connect two light bulbs into a single socket. The growth of Panasonic continued until 1922 when it was necessary to move to yet a bigger building.

Panasonic created another successful product during 1923 which was a bicycle lamp that was in a bullet shape with a battery that had a life that was ten times longer than comparable products on the market.

During 1927 Panasonic started manufacturing their first electric iron that was at a price that many could afford.

As radios became more popular in the 1930s Panasonic produced a 3 tube radio in 1931, which was known as the R31 that won awards for its design. Panasonic created unique design features that they patented and then permitted competing manufactures to use to help support growth of the acceptance and take up of radio.

In 1952 Panasonic had designed a rectangular cathode ray tube (CRT) which was an industry first. Up to this point television tubes had been round but they soon all became rectangular. They incorporated their rectangular tube in to an affordable black and white television. Throughout the 1950s Panasonic also researched ways of recording video.

By 1960 Panasonic had produced their first mass manufactured television that had a colour picture tube.

During 1991 Panasonic manufactured the first rewriteable optical disc recorder for television images which was a forerunner to the DVD recorder. They also made a commitment to environmental responsibility in 1991 with an environmental charter.

Panasonic now hold over 40000 patents in Japan and a further 54000 outside of Japan. They produce in excess of 15000 products which distribute to virtually every country in the world. Panasonic employ 306000 people within 600 companies and by value they are the fifth biggest electronic manufacturer in the world. During 2007 they filed 2007 patents which were more patents than any other company in the world.

From the beginning Konosukes company employees were inspired to design and manufacture high-quality products that improved the daily life of ordinary people. They have constantly found new ways of solving ordinary peoples day to day problems by challenging the accepted norm and producing products that provided improvements to existing products. This philosophy is still evident in many other products that Panasonic have and continue to produce. Product innovation and ongoing research into solving every day problems underpins every Panasonic product.