Ikutaro Kakehashi
| Ikutaro Kakehashi | |
|---|---|
| Born |
7 February 1930 Osaka, Japan |
| Died | 1 April 2017 (aged 87) |
Ikutaro Kakehashi (梯 郁太郎 Kakehashi Ikutarō?, 7 February 1930 – 1 April 2017) was an engineer, an entrepreneur, and the founder of Japanese electronic musical instrument manufacturers Ace Tone, Roland Corporation and ATV Corporation. He is best known for founding Roland Corporation as well as his roles in the development of Roland drum machines and the MIDI standard. Prior to Roland he started Ace Tone, an organ company that evolved into Hammond Organ Japan. He left Hammond to start Roland in the early 1970s.
Kakehashi died in April 2017 at the age of 87.
In 1947 at 16 years of age he founded the Kakehashi Clock Store. In 1954, Ikutaro Kakehashi started Kakehashi Radio electrical appliance store, while concurrently repairing electronic organs and created new prototype organs throughout the 1950s. At 28, he decided to devote himself to music and pursuit of the ideal electronic musical instrument.
In 1960, Kakehashi founded Ace Electronic Industries Inc. In 1964, he developed a hand-operated electronic drum, called the R1 Rhythm Ace. It was exhibited at Summer NAMM 1964, however not commercialized. Kakehashi patented the "Automatic Rhythm Performance Device" drum machine in 1967, a preset rhythm-pattern generator using diode matrix circuit, a drum machine where a "plurality of inverting circuits and/or clipper circuits are connected to a counting circuit to synthesize the output signal of the counting circuit" and the "synthesized output signal becomes a desired rhythm."
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