User:QwerpQwertus/Tokyo Electron/Draft

Tokyo Electron Limited (東京エレクトロン株式会社), or TEL, is a supplier of semiconductor fabrication equipment and flat panel display (FPD) production equipment. It is headquartered in Akasaka, Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan.

As of 2009, TEL is the largest manufacturer of such equipment in Japan and the second largest in the world. The company was founded as Tokyo Electron Laboratories, Inc. in 1963.

Origins
On November 11, 1963, Tokyo Electron Laboratories Incorporated was founded by Tokuo Kobu and Toshio Kodaka, largely funded by the TBS or the Tokyo Broadcast System, with a capital of over five million yen. Later that year, their office opened in the TBS main building and began manufacturing thousands of quality-control and importing diffusion furnaces made by Thermco.

In 1965, the company approached a rapidly growing business in the market, Farchild Semiconductor Corporation and agreed to serve as a sales agency for them, increasing their capital to twenty million yen and sparking interest from the NEC corporation and the Mitsubishi Electric Coproration.

They opened a new office in San Francisco, California and their new branch, Pan Electron in 1968 establishing themselves as the only stocking distributor of imported electronic components in the region.

One year later, they opened their still-functioning Yokohama office and established Teltron, a major manufacturer and distributor of car stereos, expanding their headquarters to fill the entire TBS-2 building and raising their capital to 100 million yen.

Research and development
TEL's Leading-edge Process Development Center is located in Nirasaki, Yamanashi (the company is also an official sponsor of the Japanese football club Ventforet Kofu based in Kofu, which is the capital city of Yamanashi prefecture). TEL also has the Kansai Technology Center in Amagasaki, Hyogo Prefecture and the Sendai Design and Development Center in Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture. TEL Technology Center, America, LLC in Albany, New York is the R&D center in the United States. TEL is one of the partners of IMEC, a microelectronics and nanoelectronics research center in Leuven, Belgium.