The Story of Nintendo, Part 1

And if you can identify the problem with that lyric, you can tell us that too. Yeah. No, I'm sure we'll get plenty of people telling us the problem with that lyric if they figure out the source of it. Um. All right, So today we are going to talk about a company that is fairly well known in tech circles, the Nintendo, but did not start out as a tech company as many a tech company as especially the ones

that have lasted as long as Nintendo. Yeah, some of the other, you know, video game companies also have their origin in something other than video games. I'm I'm thinking of Colico, Yeah, the Connecticut leather company. Yeah, Connecticut leather company that we've already made the joke about games coming

out of the Connecticut Leather Company and Tandy also. Yeah, so Nintendo is also one of those companies that and now they have their history in games, but it wasn't video games because in eight nine when the company was founded, video games didn't exist yet because television resolution was terrible as a non existent. Yeah, you had to actually uh stop, draw the next picture, all right, and then you know,

oh and this is what happened next. Hold on, ye, it's time for this kind of like Dragon's Layer, but it's super slow speeds. Alright, So that's the one Nega hurt. Yeah. So so in order for you guys to understand we we really actually have to go back much further than even the founding of the company. Um, Chris, um, yes, no, I'm getting in that now. You got to man, all right, the way back machine is ready to go, going in there.

I'm right behind you, Chris. Yeah. You know, sometimes I'm afraid he's gonna shove me in here and then shut the door. Yeah. Well it's bigger on the inside anyway. Alright, So let me just set this to U sixteen thirty three Japan. There were push the button, Frank, And here we are in sixteen thirty three Japan. Uh you say so the samurai right over there, that's uh watch out for the yakuza. Alright. So in sixte yeah, the Japanese. Uh, well, there was a decision may to close the borders of

Japan to be from away from the outside world. And they shoved off and they pushed themselves out in the middle of the ocean. I'm kidding. It used to be Japan used to be located next to New Jersey. Uh No, that's not true, not true at all, imagining thousands of people rowing pats. Actually it's just one Godzilla pushing really hard. Um No. As it turns out, Japan had made this decision to Japanese government made decision to to essentially ostracize

themselves from everybody else to too. There was very xenophobic era in Japan where the Japanese culture, which was very much centered on UH concepts that were UH based in things like family and honor and tradition. They saw the outside world as threats to that, and so a lot of contact was cut off from the outside world in Japan became inwardly focused. Well, at that time, the government banned the uh importation of all foreign playing cards. Part of the problem was that there was an issue with

gambling in Japan that'll come up later too. So because of the issue of gambling, the Japanese government decided to to ban the the importation and sale of foreign playing cards. Now, this actually created a market for domestic playing card companies. Um that we're able to within certain parameters produced playing cards. Now we've set the scene, all right. For the rest of this, we'll just tell it from the present day.

So let's get back in the way back machine. Come on, all right, assuming let me say this to present day, which was a late October, all right, and push the button rank and back into our cozy studio. Alright, so cozy seventeenth century Japan cuts off this these ties to the outside world. And then in eighteen fifty nine a a fellow by the name of Fusa Gio Yamachi was born.

And I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to any Japanese listeners for the way I will butcher names throughout the entirety of this podcast, because it's gonna happen. I am non Japanese. I've never taken Japanese. Um So, if you will just extend me a a little slack, uh I would owe you and rigato um So in eighteen fifty nine, He's born, Machi is born and uh and and he would found the company in eighteen eighty nine.

He called it Nintendo Kopai and the company was making special playing cards uh out of out of bark actually for a game called Hanafuda. Now do you know what Nintendo means? What does Nintendo mean? It's it's it's translated frequently as leave luck to Heaven, which sort of goes along with, you know, playing cards, because you know, and you're talking about games, luck would be involved. Sure. And

Hamafuda means flower cards. And these were cards that, instead of having numbers on them, which is what the gamblers were using, um had flowers on them, pictures of flowers hand painted actually when they first came out, and they became really really popular and uh and the company saw

a lot of early success. Uh And In eighteen eighteen eighty nine, the same year that Nintendo was founded, uh the Japanese government began to relax some of the restrictions that they had placed around the whole industry of playing cards in the first place, so it was perfectly positioned, and so Nintendo Capie began to UH to expand very quickly because everyone thought that the artwork on the cards was really beautiful and so they were desirable to have.

And then the restrictions at the same time, we're started to slack a bit. Uh the company saw a lot of early success, and that was really what it focused on, was producing playing cards. Now, in nineteen twenty nine, Fusagiro retired and he handed over the control of his company to his son in law, Uh SAKIROA and Uh, who then took the family name, the Yamauchi family name. And in fact, all Nintendo CEOs with the exception of the current one, were related to UH Fusagro in some way,

either by actual blood or by marriage. Um really by marriage when you get down to it. But in nineteen thirty three, that's when the company changed its name to Yamauchi Nintendo and Company. So they dropped the KAPI at that point and they created a a second company, a card game distributor company called Marofuku Company Limited, and both of those companies at that time saw great success. So

again Nintendo is already doing really really well. Uh, and of course video games are not anywhere near the picture at this point. Yeah. So in nineteen nine, Securio suffered a stroke and he was no longer able to control the company, and so he handed over the company to his grandson, Hiroshi. Now this caused a lot of concern within Nintendo because Hiroshi was very young. He was twenty one at the time when he was given the company,

and he was a law school student. He wasn't a business student, so he was starting to become a lawyer. He dropped out of college, out of law school in order to to take over this company, and some of the the employees of Nintendo really objected to him becoming the new head of the company, so much so that there was actually a factory strike m m. He. As a matter of fact, he uh, he went down in history for uh firing a lot of those employees. That

was not a popular move within the company. Yeah, Hiroshi was. He kind of showed everyone who was boss. He took He introduced at corporate culture. He had the Darth Vader method of of management, and that if you if you thought that he was his decisions were not good ones, then he didn't want you working for him anymore. Yeah. Yeah, actually, uh I. Part of my research was done from a book called All Your Base or Belonged to Us UM

by Harold Goldberg. He has a chapter on It's a it's a history of video games, but he has a chapter on Nintendo, which is which is pretty fascinating. And they said that that he was a really serious guy. Yeah, I mean they you know, watching him crack a smile, you'd have to wait because he didn't do it very frequently. Was a very very no nonsense sort of fellow, but very business like, exactly kind of like the cliche idea we have of the Japanese businessman, you know, very formal

and very serious. Um. And he also instituted a policy that would become something that sort of resonates throughout Nintendo for years to come, which was that he demanded that all products that Nintendo was going to produce be cleared through him personally before the company would move on it. So you think about that, I mean, this is a CEO of a company. Now most companies, the CEO is directing the company, you know, since he's got a hands

on involvement with the company. But you don't necessarily have every single product cleared through your CEO and every company. There are a few companies that, did you know, Apple being another famous company. Yeah, so Apple is another famous company where that where the CEO had a real hands on approach. Well, Hiroshi felt the same way, and and this is a strategy that would pay off for Nintendo

further down the line. Not necessarily that the CEO had to clear everything before it went through, but Nintendo decided having this real focus on product quality that would become very important when Nintendo would enter the video game market. Now, uh, company diversified quite a bit. Yeah, well yeah, well, first of all, ninety three they started to produce plastic playing cards, which was that was the first big move as far as technologically speaking goes, because but up to that point

they were using paper or would cards. So in this case they're they're moving to plastic cards, and they even started to practice with some other stuff. In nineteen fifty nine, they had they signed a big licensing agreement with another huge company. Do you know which company I'm talking about? Was it the on with the mouse with the big ears? Yes,

it was Disney. So in ninety nine they become uh, Nintendo and Disney form a partnership through licenses that allowed a Nintendo to print playing cards with Disney characters on it, which I don't know if you know this, if you're not, if you've never been to Japan and you don't know a lot about Japanese culture, you may not be aware of this. But Disney was enormous in Japan, still is. But you know, it was one of those things that really resonated with the Japanese people, and so these cards

were insanely popular. Um, and then they did try to diversify because the playing card business, even at that point, Nintendo could see that that the business was starting to slow down, and so they started looking into other ways of making money. Now, you did you have a couple that you wanted to particularly mention Um, there's one I'm sort of debating mentioning was the hotel. Yes it was the hotel. It's a very special kind of hotel. Yes, it wasn't just a regular hotel. It was a hotel

that didn't have windows. Well, of course not it's a Nintendo. Oh wait, never mind, all right, No, so while we're dancing around here, is that and is this was gonna be something that's shocking to people who think of Nintendo as this family friendly sort of video game company. Um, it was a hotel that didn't have windows. It was meant for people who wanted a discreet place to whisk away to and have a romantic interlude. Yes see, that's that was very that was that was way of putting it.

And they had a taxi company, yeah, yeah, which they it did have windows because it turned out that if you had a taxi with no windows, it was very dangerous to drive on the road. Yes, so anyway, yeah, so they Nintendo, by the way, was not the only company that tried this whole hotel, this love nest hotel thing. Um, there were many other companies that tried it as well. So Nintendo tried that and the taxi service, as well as producing foods essentially foods that you would buy at

a supermarket. But none of these lines of business really panned out, and these were all failures for Nintendo, and Hiroshi had sort of a black eye for kind of pushing the company into these areas. But as it turns out, um, it was important for for the company to try and diversify because in nineteen sixty four, the the game card industry in Japan crashed. Just like you know, we've talked about the three video game question. We'll talk about it again in a in a little bit, but we've talked

about that in the past. The same sort of thing happened in Japan with playing cards, and oddly enough, it was for the same reasons are largely the same reasons, and one of the big reasons was saturation. Yeah, you know, you got to a point where these cards were really really popular for a really long time, so everyone owned them. But if everyone owns them, why would you go out buy another one. You've already got them. You don't need anymore.

So because of that, the whole industry started to suffer because you know, no one needed to buy more cards. Uh. And this was right around the same time that Tokyo was hosting the Olympics. So it was weird because you had this huge influx of money coming into the country, but you also had this industry failed, this this historically relevant industry failing. Yes, at the same time, but not to know, manages to skirt the shoals of bankruptcy. Uh to quote money python. Um, well, they got into toys

for a while too. Yeah, Well, in nineteen five they hired a guy named gun pay Ya Koi, and gun pay was a fellow who was very inventive. Um. He worked in one of the playing card factories, and there he happened to be working there on a day when Hiroshi came through and Hiroshi sees gun pay playing around with something that he had invented that was essentially do you remember those in in cartoons that happens all the time.

There's a character that picks up a a boxing glove that's on like an accordion hand, uh, accordion sort of lattice thing. Then if you pull a trigger, it extends out and punches someone who's twenty feet away. So one of those at home, that's well, that's essentially what gun

pay had invented. He had invented this thing that was a claw on the end of one of those so you would, uh, you know, you pull these two levers together and it would extend out this accordion arm, and at the end of the accordian arm was a claw.

And the very last action is that claw would close, so it allows you to pick stuff up that was slightly inconvenient for you to get up and pick up yourself and um and Hiroshi came to the conclusion that perhaps what Nintendo could do is diversify and get into the toy business. Yes, and that that invention should be came the ultra hand m that's uh, you know, very typical and in my head Japanese name for something like that, I'm probably thinking of ultraman at that point, so UM.

But yeah, it actually came with uh with some plastic balls that you could pick up um. You know, well anything like that you got to include the thing to pick up. So they did that for a little while. But that wasn't the only thing they didn't. They didn't really, from my research, get into toys wholesale, like where you know, oh, this is what we're gonna do in the future. It was more like a um, a trial thing that they

sort of experimented with for a little bit. Yeah, and there were other I mean, there were several examples of toys that they got into, UM, some of which gave a hint at what they would be doing in the future. Like they had a love tester, yes, the old the old love testers, which you know, just sort of measure the um the your compatibility with another person you hold a little handle and it tells you how red hot, yeah, exactly, or or a cold fish I remember cold Fish. Yeah,

used to have those stuckies. Stuckies. Oh man, that's taking me back to a comedy album anyway. But yeah, the the Yeah, I was just looking at looking it up, and it's a little slower to do this in uh, in a non electronic format. But Goldberg the Dead Tree. I actually had the Dead Tree edition. Whine checked it out from the library. Um. Apparently they sold about one

point two million Ultra hands. So and the The Love Tester came out in nine nine, but both of them we're going with UH with the company's philosophy of because YOKOI apparently said, and this is a quote, the Nintendo way of adapting technology is not to look for the state of the art, but to utilize um, mature technology that can be mass produced cheaply. Yeah. I feel like

this is going to come up again. Um, but yeah, that's that's a very it was a very responsible way of doing things because it enabled them to put something together using existing technology, no R and D. But at the same time it's sold very well, So that's that's a good way to make money. Yeah, in fact, the

toys really turned Nintendo around. Without without that that serendipitous uh discovery where Hiroshi saw Yakoi's work, Really the company may not have survived because that the playing card industry was in such such a such dire straits, and uh, the other attempts of Nintendo to diversify had failed pretty dramatically that without that, it may not have been able to stay afloat long enough to get into the video

game era. But moving ahead a couple of years, in nineteen three, Nintendo developed a technology called the Laser Clay Shooting System, which was clay shooting system. It was it was a light gun game. Okay, because I'm just trying to figure out what laser clay was, Well, you know, it's it was a skeet shooting system. The skeet shooting game. Like if you've ever been to one of those giant arcades that has like the rifle that's really a light gun, and then you're firing at the image of a of

a clay pigeon. Duck hunt. Yeah, yeah, like duck Hunt eventually would become, but in this case, it was stuff that was projected on the wall. It wasn't necessarily it wasn't like a screen screen. Um, they installed these and old bowling alleys that had gone out of business. So this was kind of creating an entertainment destination. It wasn't. There's still a little too early for the arcade era. We're talking nineteen seventy three here. In the arcade era

really started to take off in the late seventies. It was heading into that period though. Yeah, that's when you started seeing them pop up. And of course in Japan arcades are still incredibly popular. In in the United States, they are a rare breed. Uh So. In nineteen seventy four, Nintendo formed a partnership and arranged to become the distributor in Japan of the Magna Vox Odyssey. I yes, I remember it well unfortunately. Yeah, so the Honesty was a

a home video game console, very limited. We talked about it on our home video Games podcast, The Crash of the Video Game. Yeah, so this is one of the the first actually it was the first video game home video game console that really reached wide distribution, and so Nintendo became the the Japanese distributor for this. Now, Nintendo did not develop the Odyssey, but they the company saw the the potential for that in Japan and actually it

did very well. And then in uh moving up, over the next few years, Nintendo started to market its own game consoles. The game and Watch oh that was one of them. Yeah, the game that was the first portable system that was back that that I officially launched the nineteen eighty but just before that, in the seventies, Nintendo had some game consoles that were similar to the Odyssey, and that they were not. It wasn't the kind of game console where you would put a cartridge in and

play a game. It was had had games hardwired onto the console, so you couldn't switch between games or you could, you know, if there were like multiple games on that console, you could, but you couldn't put a new game into it. Yes, and and and that really endeared Nintendo to Magnavox. Yeah, and by endeared, I mean completely ticked off and inspired lawsuits. Yeah, because again Nintendo had become the distributor of this device and then starts to come out with its own competing products,

and Magnavox says, hey, but Nintendo didn't stump Nintendo. They had lost the lawsuit and had to pay licensing, but they they put out their own version of games like ponged uh and this is also yeah Pong and you know in in nineteen seven, that's also when Nintendo hired a certain young artist who would become instrumental in the company's success, Shighetto Miyamoto. Yes, a famous name in video games. If you do not know who Miyamoto San is, then

you are not a not a Nintendo fan. Yeah, I think it's safe to say that if if there is a polar opposite to the company's CEO, Miyamoto San would have been that guy. Miyamoto is like a rock star, and he really is treated like a rock star. Well, he wasn't at first thing. When he was first hired, he was just an artist, a no name artist. And as a matter of fact, he uh he got the job because of his parents connections. Um yeah, this again

is according to uh Goldberg's book. But apparently, um, he he had his uh he he wanted to be a manga artist. Um, and his parents happened to know. Well, you know, when your parents know the CEO of a company, yeah, um, you know there they they may very well try to get you a job, which is what happened in this case. And Uh, it wasn't. It wasn't like it was a high level job. Now he was a basic artist for

this company. Yeah, basically. Uh. During the interview process, you Mantu was asking him questions like why should I hire you? Um and and and told him, you know, if I hire you, it won't be because I know your parents, It'll be because you're good enough to work here. Uh here Again, he's a no, no nonsense kind of guy. He's a real business person. Um. But he said, yeah, okay fine, uh and hired him after about a month of waiting, and uh came on as a just as

a uh card artist. He actually asked him if he he had an idea for a revolutionary card game. We're looking for something that's gonna revolutionize the card game industry. What do you got? You got the next Pokemon? Well not yet, but at the time he was really looking for something big. He said, well, okay, fine, you can work as an artist, and that's what he did for

a couple of years. And and Miamoto is the guy who would eventually launch some of Nintendo's most popular series, including the Mario series UH and the legend of Zelda, Star Fox. Lots of those, not all of them. Do a barrel roll. Uh, there's yeah, a lot of the games that became the big, big sellers and still the big names. I mean, you know Nintendo and Mario. That's that's Mario is like the Nintendo mascot. So Miamoto is the man who responsible for the creation of that character.

And in fact, like I said, now, when he appears at UM at conferences and stuff, he's treated like like rock star, like they're standing ovations when he comes up on stage, which is a pretty phenomenal. So so the question is, how does a guy from the mail room, not literally, how does a guy from the mail room end up being the rock star of the company. Please explain, Well, we've got the book. Well yeah, that's but because um they had started trying to get into the arcade game business. Yeah, uh,

they're one of their earliest. In fact, their very first arcade game was the sexily titled computer Othello, which never got outside of Japan. Um I was produced in nine But we know that love those games and saying not not not terribly exciting. Uh, And like Chris was saying, the game and watch portable games came out and those were pretty popular. Yeah, those were games that, like the video game consoles we were talking about, those played a specific game. It's not like a game system where you

could play multiple games. But some of them, some of the game and watched actually looked like the later Nintendo DS system. So it's interesting because if you look at some of those old game and watch games, you can see where the design elements that would later come into

the Nintendo d S would come into play. And Yakoi, uh Gonna pay Yukoi was the guy who was responsible for those the line of games, so he his influence lasted far beyond just the game and Watch series and um, we'll talk more about him in a in a later podcast. This is actually gonna be a two parter, by the way, because we're coming up on twenty seven minutes and we still haven't even introduced the first true video game console.

But don't worry, we're gonna cover all of Nintendo. We just we knew from the start it was gonna be a two parter um. So now that they've introduced the computer Othello, they've decided that they want to get into this the arcade atmosphere is really exploding. Worldwide arcades are just that's the place to be. So in nineteen eighty one, Nintendo develops a video game that would become one of the most popular video games out there. It's right up

there with Space Invaders and Pac Man. Yes, but the problem was in eight and then this if they're linked haha linked? Um, Sorry, it was a Nintendo Joe Zelda choke. Um. They came out with a game in nineteen eighty that was just the opposite of a hit. It was called Radar Scope and it did really, really badly. So if you don't know about it, there's a reason. Um. And the thing is, um Yamachi knew that Miamoto had good ideas.

He could see that you know well, I mean, he wouldn't have hired him if he didn't think he was. He had promise. Um, he was good at identifying talent and bringing it into the company. Um, you could argue. And the thing is he came up to, uh, to Miamoto and said, what do you do you like video games? And he said, well, yeah, you know I've I've played Breakout and I've played Ponged and uh, you know, I

like him just fine. He's like, we'll do something with this, because they had all this this hardware and these cabinets that they had built for Radar Scope, and they wanted to do something else. And he said one of the problems was, and again this is gonna come up again. Miamoto said, there's no story here. The game needs a story. He wanted it to tell a story. See, he was fascinated with stories and it still is, and with nature and animals and plants and things, and he said, this

is this is something that will help. So um. The game that Jonathan was talking about, the one that came out in was built on the failure of Radar Scope. And they said, okay, well we've got this hardware, let's what can we do with this? And most of the people in Nintendo didn't like what Miamoto sign came up with, yeah, which was of course the classic arcade game Donkey Kong, oh man, and uh yeah, how many quarters? I don't you know how much of my parents money I squandered.

Our Donkey Kong probably have bought a house. Uh I probably did buy a house just for someone else. But Donkey Kong, of course, was that the story is that our hero jump Man as he was known at the time. Actually he was Mr Video to Mr Miamoto. Yeah. Uh, he would eventually become Mario. But right now, at the time Donkey Kong came out, he was jumped Man. A matter of fact, it was in the Ends instructions. He was the hero who was rescuing his girlfriend. Do you

know the girlfriend's name. It wasn't Princess Peach at the time. I mean she's known that way now. Pauline Pauline he had to rescue from from Donkey Kong, who was, of course a giant ape gorilla my dreams, Donkey Kong essentially means stubborn gorilla. Yeah that the name still doesn't make a lot of sense. So of course to take off a film studio, yeah, nothing like taking off King Kong anyway.

So yeah, Donkey Kong, you all you Your job was to try and rescue Pauline from Donkey Kong, and Donkey Kong would try and stop you by throwing barrels at you. And it's a very simple story. Climbed to the top to rescue the girl and as soon as you get to the top, he the the gorilla, gets angry, grabs her and takes off for the next floor. So you're gradually climbing up the uh construction of a giant building. Yeah, and which the construction takes different forms too, depending on

the level. Yes, and considering you take down part of the construction, it's amazing that he could still climb up and get into that ruining the magic. Also also weird that parts of the upper part of the building are more complete than the lower parts. But that messing with it. This isn't This isn't about shoddy construction practices. This is about it was a brilliant construction practice on the part of Nintendo. Now, they said, a lot of the Nintendo people,

we're thinking that this would never sell the idea. This is just too weird, especially for people in America. Yeah, how wrong they were. Donkey Kong was an enormous hit everywhere, so much so that Nintendo immediately saw the potential once the figure started coming in, and they then went on to develop Donkey Kong Junior, which came out in so just a year later. How much money that I spent

on that game? Ye, this one. You're playing Junior and your your job is to rescue Donkey Kong at this point, Mario has captured Donkey Kong and had in a cage. Mario is Mario at this point, yes he is, and so you have to rescue Donkey Kong from Mario. And then three they introduced Donkey Kong three, which had the other protagonist, Stanley the bug man oh and how much Money? Oh wait, I don't think I ever saw one of those. Man. I love Donkey Kong three. I love Donkey Kong three

because it was a lot like Galaga. You know, instead of shooting uh in shooting, instead of shooting spaceships, you shot bugs that were coming down to steal flowers. And at the same time you had to manage how low Donkey Kong was getting on these this pair of vines, as Donkey Kong would gradually scoot lower and lower on the vines, and your job was to spray Donkey Kong frequently enough to push them up to the next level. And meanwhile you're also trying to fend off the bugs

they're trying to steal your flowers. And I loved this game. I don't think I even saw it on Starcade. And yes, I used to watch that. I was really good at it. Well, right around nine eight three is when Nintendo's looking into getting into another related market, which is the home video game system market. Not just not just a console they can play a game, or two games or six games, but one that can play and uh indefinite number of

games because you can interchange cartridges with the system. Again, we covered this in another podcast, but this was popular at this point. Atari was going gangbusters. They had competition from um, uh, from Mattel. They had competition from Colico, and in fact, Collico's launch of the Colico Vision game console came with Donkey Kong. Yeah. Um, they had licensed Donkey Kong to the other game manufacturers. I'm oversimplifying for the sake of hurrying this up, um, but yeah, I

mean it was a hit for them. They they were realizing that this was possible and hey, maybe we could make money on the consoles ourselves. Yep. So that's when Nintendo decided to try and get into the video game market. Uh. It was funny because just as Nintendo was positioning itself to enter the video game market, the video game was market was starting to crash. But you know what, Originally I thought that we would get through a Nintendo in

tainment system and then pick up from there. But I think this is a good place to stop for our first episode, and what we'll do is in the History of Nintendo Part two, we will pick up with the debut of the Famicon, also known as the Nintendo Entertainment System, and walk through Nintendo's history with home video games. Yeah, and we've we've seen though the seeds have been sown. People who who made a Nintendo and in the name

that we all know today are with the company. They've realized, um that a story can propel a video game to to stardom, and they've identified their company mascot yep. So when we pick up, we will start in Uh, well, I think July fifte is just as good a day as any, So we'll pick up and we'll explain the

significance of that. Yes, so guys, be sure to tune into Part two, which we will be recording almost immediately after we've finished this, and we will complete the story of the history of Nintendo and bring it up to to present day and kind of explain where the company is right now, which is a position that it was in not you know, more than a little bit more than fifty years ago. Uh, they're they're back there again in some troubled times, but we'll get to that in

the next episode. And if you guys have suggestions for our specific topics you would like us to tackle, including companies that you think we should profile. Let us been a popular series, Yeah, we've had. We've had quite a few people, right and we know the HPS on our list, um, and we've got several other companies on our list as well. So if you have a specific company you think we should focus on, let us no, you can let us

know an email. Our addresses tech Stuff at how stuff Works dot com or tell us on Twitter or Facebook are handled. There is tech stuff hs W and Chris and I will taught to you again really soon. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join How Stuff Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The House Efforts iPhone app has arrived. Download it today on iTunes, brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.

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