Yamaha

The is a Japan company with a wide range of products and services, predominantly musical instruments and electronics. Yamaha was founded in 1890 as a piano and reed organ manufacturer by Torakusu Yamaha as in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka prefecture, and was incorporated on October 12, 1897. The company's origins as a musical instrument manufacturer is still reflected today in the group's logo a trio of interlocking tuning fork. After World War II, company president Genichi Kawakami repurposed the remains of the company's war-time production machinery and the company's expertise in metallurgical technologies to the manufacture of motorcycles. The YA-1 (aka Akatombo, the "Red Dragonfly"), of which 125 were built in the first year of production (1954), was named in honor of the founder. It was a 125cc, single cylinder, two-stroke, streetbike patterned after the German DKW RT125 (which the British munitions firm, BSA, had also copied in the post-war era and manufactured as the Bantam and... full article at wikipedia