Light is one of essentials for environment and life of human beings. Since the appearance of mankind about some million years ago, we have enjoyed a great deal of benefit from sunlight. Edison's invention of an incandescent lamp has given rise to many of artificial light sources, which changes electrical energy to light. After that, remarkable progresses have been made, and now light technology has a great role in the advance of information society.

ELEVAM, founded in 1917, has progressed with light technology utilizing discharge phenomena. In 1924, we produced receiving tube at the start of radio broadcasting in Japan and launched sales as ELEVAM Vacuum Tube. In 1962, we started to produce neon lamps , which were applied to indicators of electronic flashes in cameras, and they led our company to the top share maker. In 1972, we developed a cold cathode black-light and a color light , and then in 1983 we succeeded in producing a tipless cold-cathode fluorescent lamp for the first time in Japan.

In 2004, Tohoku ELEVAM received the certification of ISO 14001 and declared a continual contribution for global environment. Now we start a new advance for contributions to the world society with light technology.