Takehiko was born in the castle town of Kagoshima (on the island of Kyushu) on July 2.

At the age of 16 he left Kagoshima for Tokyo to live with his brother-in-law Kiyosuke Oku, who was working for the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce. Takehiko made preparations for higher education while doing Oku’s household chores.

After graduation, Takehiko began working in the same place as his brother-in-law, in the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce, as an assistant patent examiner. This is when he first met Korekiyo Takahashi, who would later become Prime Minister. Takehiko was introduced by Oku to Takahashi, who was a close friend of Oku and the first Minister of Agriculture and Commerce at the time.
When Takahashi was asked by Zenjiro Yasuda, the founder of Yasuda Zaibatsu, for the right person to dispatch to developed countries to bring back the knowledge and technology necessary for domestic nail production, Takahashi recommended Takehiko.

On December 1, Yamatake Shokai opened in Kyobashi, Tokyo City (presently, Yaesu, Chuo-ku, Tokyo). This date is now observed as the anniversary of the azbil Group’s founding.

Takehiko traveled to the U.S. in October to visit local manufacturers. The visit paid off with Yamatake Shokai signing an agreement to act as the sole Japanese distributor for the Brown Instrument Company. The sale of imports from Brown began in 1920.

The Great Depression began on October 24th. Prices on the New York Stock Exchange fell precipitously, and Yamatake Shokai was faced with the greatest crisis since its founding.

A factory called Yamatake Shokai Instrument Manufacturing Plant was constructed in Ohmori, Tokyo. At this point, Yamatake Shokai transformed itself from a machine tool import trader to an industrial instrument manufacturer.

The Kamata Factory was constructed. Also, a company called Nihon Brown Keiki Co., Ltd., which was relatively small business at the time, was established specifically for instruments. Takehiko’s second son, Toshihiko, assumed office as its president. The name of the company was changed to Yamatake Keiki Co., Ltd., due to a wave of war-time sentiment in Japan during the Second World War.

Takehiko, after studying foreign-made valves, successfully produced Japan’s first top-and-bottom-guided double-seated control valve and delivered it to Nippon Oil refinery in Akita. In the same year, the February 26 Incident (an attempted coup d’état in Japan) took place.

President Toshihiko Yamaguchi traveled to the U.S. and successfully concluded a technological partnership agreement with Honeywell, which had acquired the Brown Instrument Company. Since Honeywell dealt not only in industrial instruments but also in air conditioning devices, combustion control devices, and microswitches, these products and their technologies were introduced to Japan for the first time.
In the same year, a peace treaty between Japan and the Allied powers was signed in San Francisco.

On April 1, the technological partnership agreement between Yamatake and Honeywell received official permission. Before any other Japanese company, Yamatake established a partnership with a foreign company and started business as a comprehensive manufacturer of automation equipment.
The company conveyed the up-to-date information from Honeywell to customers in Japan and greatly contributed to promoting public awareness of process instrumentation.

On the 50th anniversary of the founding of Yamatake, the company changed its name from Yamatake Keiki Co., Ltd., to Yamatake Honeywell Keiki Co., Ltd., in order to deepen the partnership with Honeywell.

The company’s business was divided into the four areas of microswitches, industrial instruments, control valves, and control devices.
The Kamata Factory manufactured Modutrol motors, the first compact motors for control devices in Japan.

The Fujisawa Factory started operation in May.
The company’s founder, Takehiko Yamaguchi, received the Medal with Blue Ribbon, a Medal of Honor awarded by the Japanese Government.

Yamatake Honeywell Keiki Co., Ltd., established a wholly-owned company called Yamatake Keiso Co., Ltd., to provide services such as air conditioning instrumentation, engineering, maintenance, and sale of control devices.

Yamatake Maintenance Co., Ltd. was established on September 27 in Fukuoka.

For the development of the CurrentroniK, Shinichiro Ogawa of Yamatake-Honeywell received the H. W. Sweatt Award, the first non-U.S. citizen to do so.

Yamatake began to manufacture Honeywell’s ETOS electrical analog instruments. A group of ETOS sensors, such as electrical pressure transmitters, differential pressure transmitters, temperature converters, and air pressure converters, were also manufactured in Japan. ETOS sensors were distinctive because of their 4–10 mA two-line signal transmission method and incorporation of transistors in all the functions to deliver fast and accurate responses. The concepts used in its development were so significant that they became standard in electrical instruments that followed.

Yamatake began to market cage-guided control valves whose architecture was a world first, and very different from that of existing top-and-bottom guided control valves. Since this cage-guided valve was easy to use and of highly reliable quality with low noise, it became a huge hit.
In the 1970s, the rate of internal production reached 90 % of the total production and Yamatake’s control valve business ranked first among domestic manufacturers. It was recognized as a comprehensive instrument manufacturer who could supply everything from sensors to actuators.

While considering how compact instruments should be designed in the new age of instrumentation, Yamatake chose to meet the need for space-saving, small instruments that could be easily monitored by operators, and it developed the VSI vertical scale indicating controller with new current-balancing circuits.
The PVSI pneumatic vertical scale indicating controller was displayed as a model product at the annual Measurement and Control Fair, and two years later in 1967, the N-matik series of pneumatic vertical scale indicating controllers was introduced. Its front panel measured only 2×6 inches, the smallest in the world at the time.

The TDCS3000LCN was announced to the world at the annual Measurement and Control Fair. This product was developed by the “Project 80” team, which was organized in the 1980s to work with Honeywell and develop a successor device to the TDCS2000.

The DSTJ3000 smart transmitter went on the market. Together with the TDCS3000, the product was used by many petrochemical plants and chemical plants.

The DigitroniK SDC200 temperature indicating controller was introduced, laying the foundation for current temperature controllers. It sold so many units that production could not keep up.

The SGC3000 smart gas chronograph, developed entirely with the company’s own technologies, including semiconductor sensor components, made its debut. It was made compact and lightweight so that it could be installed in the plant like a general transmitter, which helped to improve responsiveness, reducing installation and operation costs.
This product changed the image of existing chronographs for processed gas, as it was based on an entirely new concept, enabling users to handle it like a transmitter.

In response to natural gas trading based on calorific value, which began in the EU, the company announced the world’s smallest gas chromatograph, the HGC303, which was increasingly purchased by power plants and LNG carriers as its convenience was recognized.

Low-temperature valves and AIRcube air flowmeters, which incorporated a multifunctional semiconductor differential pressure/pressure/temperature sensor, were introduced. In the following year, 2004, many devices, such as STEAMcube steam flowmeters, were introduced for energy management.
In the 2000s, the Industrial-DEO production control system was developed using an open architecture approach, which enabled the system to communicate with devices of different types and also with peripheral devices, whose technologies continually change.
System innovation continued to progress in the field, including improvement and optimum control of production, quality control, and energy and environmental management, and automation began contributing to society as a whole, including industry.

In the 1970s, air conditioners were no longer a luxury in Japan; not only office buildings and department stores, but also small cafés in towns and recreational arcades were fully equipped with air conditioning systems. The room thermostat on the right played a role in popularizing air conditioners in Japan.

A new DELTA 2000 imported from Honeywell went on the market. Large and very high buildings were constructed on spacious grounds, and therefore their facilities became ever more complex. This led to a strong demand for centralized control of the facilities. To meet this need the DELTA 2000 was introduced as a central monitoring system that could provide integrated management of multiple buildings scattered around a region as well as large buildings like high-rises, and also could comprehensively manage the building’s air conditioning, electricity, sanitation, fire and burglar alarm, etc., facilities. The system had the extraordinary ability to control more than 20,000 items.

Since the DELTA 2000 proved to be too expensive to sell in Japan, Yamatake considered domestic production of the system for small-sized and middle-sized buildings. It began developing the 500 series of DELTA 2000 (the DELTA 500), and announced the product’s availability in the same year.
As a result of oil crises in Japan in 1973 and 1979, the Japanese economy became sluggish, and public sentiment increased for energy efficiency in building air conditioning. The DELTA 500 was able to take advantage of this trend, since its recently developed microcomputers were capable of energy-saving control.

The SAVIC 1000 and 2000 systems for large-scale building management, which could control 1000 and 2000 items respectively, were developed with basic BA functions and energy-saving applications. The systems’ human-machine interface was capable of displaying text in Japanese kanji characters on CRT monitors.

The savic-net 50 and 20 series were developed. Previous models had mainly operated air-conditioning facilities, but the system was now capable of integrated management of security, disaster prevention, lighting, etc., facilities in addition to air conditioning. Furthermore, it could work with information and telecommunication networks, and therefore could provide audio warning to system managers via a company’s PBX telephone system.

A maintenance service called BESTMAN went on the market, the name being an acronym for “building environment system technical management.” The system was based on the idea of preventive maintenance, in which devices are maintained based on anticipation of problems instead of being repaired after problems were found. It is a functionally systematized group of services including maintenance, guarantees, and parts management.

Yamatake began business in the area of critical environments, where high-quality treatment of air is vital and ventilation is the main concern of customers, such as chemical research facilities, animal rearing facilities, bioscience labs, and hospitals facing the risk of infections.

The next-generation savic-net™ FX building management system was placed on the market. Yamatake offered customers a superior system based on its key capabilities of monitoring buildings regardless of place and time, selecting any monitor station type, and selecting functions regardless of building size.

Yamatake developed the Intelligent Component Series of control devices, which could handle an increased amount of data with more sophisticated basic measurement and control functions. The origin of the name was the ability of these components to retain device data and control data and to adapt their behavior according to the environment.