Hamamatsu Information Book

Katō Kōtarō created the first lathe in Hamamatsu and contributed to the city’s development on the manufacture of machine tools, which are often referred as the Mother Machines.

 

He was born in 1901 in where is now Toyohashi City, Aichi Prefecture.

While he worked as a smith, he attended an engineering school attached to Hamamatsu Nishi Elementary School at night form age 16 to age 21. He learned math, English, and technical drafting there. He started his own iron factory, Katō Tekkōjō, in 1927.

He was frustrated that there wasn‘t any machine tool made in Hamamatsu. Despite of fund shortage, he succeeded on developing a prototype of a lathe for the first time in Hamamatsu in 1930.

He sold the first lathe he made to Art Shōkai Hamamatsu Branch, a company managed by Honda Sōichirō.

Later on, he developed many other machine tools such as a shaper that grinds square timbers and a large sized planer that grinds flat surface and materials in various shapes and sizes.

He died in 1978.

 

"Enshū Kikai Kinzoku Kōgyō Hattenshi"(History of Enshū’s Machinery and Metal Indusry)