Bridgestone |
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History
The following section is an excerpt from Wikipedia's Mercedes-Benz SLK-Class (R172) page on 6 January 2016, text available via the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
The Bridgestone Corporation (株式会社ブリヂストン) is a multinational auto and truck parts manufacturer founded in 1931 by Shojiro Ishibashi (石橋正二郎) in the city of Kurume, Fukuoka, Japan. The name Bridgestone comes from a calque translation and transposition of ishibashi, meaning "stone bridge" in Japanese.
As of 2014, the company is the largest manufacturer of tires in the world, slightly ahead of Michelin.
Production facilities belonging to the Bridgestone Group number 141 in twenty-four countries, as of the end of 2005.
Origins
The very first Bridgestone tire was produced on 9 April 1930, by the Japanese "Tabi" Socks Tyre Division (actually made jika-tabi). One year later on 1 March 1931, the founder, Shojiro Ishibashi, made the "Tabi" Socks Tyre Division independent and established the Bridgestone Tire Co., Ltd. in the city of Kurume, Fukuoka Prefecture. "Bridgestone" was named after the name of the founder, Shojiro Ishibashi (Ishi = Stone, Bashi = Bridge).
Foregoing dependence on European and North American technology, the Bridgestone Tire Co., Ltd. set its eyes on manufacturing tires based solely on Japanese technology. The foundling company experienced many difficulties in the areas of technology, production and sales in the early days. Eventually, improvements were achieved in quality and manufacturing processes which led to the business rapidly expanding on both the domestic and overseas markets.
| Date | Document Name & Details | Documents |
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| 3 July 2012 | Pneumatic Tire United States Patent US 8,210,220 B2 Syu Nagai and Atsushi Miyasaka for Bridgestone Corporation |  PDF - 1.5MB - 18 pages |
| 3 July 2012 | Pneumatic Tire with Tread Having Inside and Outside Circumferential Sipes United States Patent US 8,210,221 B2 Yukihiro Kiwaki and Ryoichi Watabe for Bridgestone Corporation | PDF - 827KB - 11 pages |
| 3 July 2012 | Pneumatic Tire with Tread Having Isosceles Trapezoidal Block Portion Between Lug Grooves United States Patent US 8,210,218 B2 Yoichi Nakamura and Takashi Kodama for Bridgestone Corporation | PDF - 1.7MB - 25 pages |
| 20 November 2012 | Design for Tire Tread United States Patent US D671,065 Kevin E. Schiefele for Bridgestone Americas Tire Operations, LLC | PDF - 468KB - 7 pages |
