
ThyssenKrupp Multi – world’s first rope-free elevator [video] - based2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7QlAsxJP-g
======
Animats
The elevator industry has been playing around with multi-cab systems for many
years. The Otis Odyssey system (1997) [1] had cabs that could move both
horizontally and vertically. The cabs were more like containers carried
vertically in ordinary elevators and slid out sideways for horizontal
movement. Otis built a full-sized prototype, but nobody ever ordered one.

Otis considered ropeless elevators, but in 1997 it looked like it would
increase the energy consumption by 7X. Without counterweights, the motors have
to do a lot more work. But maybe Multi can recover some of the energy via
regeneration.

There are automated parking garages that can move cars sideways.[2] Those go
back to the 1960s, and tend to be high-maintenance.

The Multi system looks really complicated mechanically. All those moving
parts. Worse, they're on vertical surfaces in the shafts, where maintenance
will be difficult. With regular elevators, the high-maintenance items are in
the machine room. This will probably go into some prestige tower, but not be
replicated much.

[1]
[http://www.barkermohandas.com/images/Integrated%20Vertical%2...](http://www.barkermohandas.com/images/Integrated%20Vertical%20&%20Horizontal%20Transport.pdf)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3vtpGtyw1k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3vtpGtyw1k)

~~~
danieltillett
I am wondering if the solution is to use modular counterweights that can also
be moved sideways and swapped around too.

~~~
kodfodrasz
I wonder how you wonder to use that.

Do you know the principle of a traditional elevator, and the role of a
counterweight?

~~~
danieltillett
Yes I do know how a counterweights work. In principle if the elevator can be
shift sideways then the counterweights can be too. Of course when the elevator
goes up and down it will need to be linked to a counterweight, but as long as
this linkage can be made transient then should work.

~~~
kodfodrasz
I am not convinced by your understanding.

The elevator conserves energy by having a counterweight, and the work needed
for moving the elevator (disregarding the loss of the system) is 0 if the
elevator is empty and the counterweight is the same weight of the elevator.

This is true for the length of the rope.

Now if you have a 99 storey building, with side moving elevators, you cannot
have counterweights, as the ropes would be in each others' way when moving
sideways. Either having a rope in way for 99 storeys in worst case, or with
shorter ropes you increase complexity even further and negate the energy
saving. if travelling further than the length of the rope.

The only advantage of this design is the lack of ropes. The downside is
increased energy use.

Regarding transient linkings: even more complexity, and possibly the cabins
need to wait for the counterweight to arrive, and hand over the
counterweights? Even scheduling complexity is increased. Totally useless, as
to have it a bit feasable you need to sill keed the functionality of
counterweightless motion.

You can understand this by drawing if still not clear.

~~~
danieltillett
You don’t need ropes to have a counterweight. The same effect can be
accomplished with track and gears.

I do agree with you that having independent counterweights would increase the
complexity and the likelihood of a breakdown. Ultimately any solution would
depend on the value being provided by the solution verse the increased cost or
either maintenance or energy costs.

More importantly the purpose of me suggesting this solution was not to solve
the elevator problem (I am sure lots of engineers have thought more deeply
about this than me), but to discuss the problem.

~~~
kodfodrasz
Oh, OK. I think that an energy recuperation system and simply a "vertical
railway" is simpler and more robust overall. No ropes needed just electric
wiring, and elevators moving down are the counter weights. But this is
basically what is demonstrated.

What I thought parent meant was using counterweights in the more traditional
sense.

And yes, moving down also returns the energy, after all gravitational field is
conservative. The real use of the counterweight is that the power needed to
lift is less (you only need to work to lift the cargo), which means cost
savings in motors, wiring, electricity, etc. Those saving by a mechanical
counterweight system cannot be had with this setup without insane complexity.
With today's solid state power electronics it is simpler and more reliable to
use an electronic solution.

------
danielvf
The big benefit is that you get more than one elevator per shaft. For
skyscrapers the amount of floor space wasted by elevators grows exponentially
by the number of floors.

Say you have a 5 story building that needs a one shaft elevator. 5 floors
tiles 100 sqft per floor is 500 sqft of wasted shaft space. Then say you have
a 10 story building that needs two shafts. Now you are wasting 10 floors times
two shafts or 2,000 sqft. And so on.

An old and terrifing solution to this was to use two shafts and run a
continuous loop of open door elevators.

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ro3Fc_yG3p0](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ro3Fc_yG3p0)

~~~
anoother
Paternosters. You say terrifying, I say fun.

There's one in Leicester University (not the only one in the UK, I'm sure).

Really not that dangerous, with a cable near the top of each aperture that
triggers a stop if it's touched.

~~~
stcredzero
The SF garage my fiancee parks in has this thing made from an industrial belt,
with steps bolted onto it. I think there are quite a few of those in Stuttgart
as well, though they are being fazed out. It's very efficient, but not for ze
stupits!

~~~
URSpider94
I saw one like this as a child, in Chicago. As I remember, it was explicitly
only for the employees to use to get to the cars, as it was a valet facility.

~~~
stcredzero
That's what the one I saw was!

------
ChuckMcM
The follow up video
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OBHUZetYIU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OBHUZetYIU)
was a bit more interesting. It shows the mockup system running through a
variety of transitions.

I'd be interested in why they decided to make the 'track' as complex as they
did. The transition nodes are an amazing mechanism but it seems also a likely
failure point.

~~~
21
It's explained in another video. Those "tracks" are linear motors, with
periodic electro magnetic coils.

Looks like it will be crazily expensive.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdTsbFS4xmI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdTsbFS4xmI)

------
userbinator
"World's first 3D people mover" might be a more appropriate --- and enticing
--- title, because "rope-free" can also refer to hydraulic elevators (which
have been around for over a century.)

~~~
londons_explore
As far as I can see, the design only allows 2D movement. If you wanted the
lift to move toward or away from the camera, you would need either some kind
of 2nd attachment point on a different side.

~~~
samstave
why couldn't a horizontal segment have a curve to change the Z axis by
whatever angle you wanted to get to.

Also, they could have a completely circular horizontal segment to move people
through an upper level of a round building - like a stadium...

~~~
CydeWeys
Or a vertical segment could have a curve too. Imagine rotating by 45 degrees
as you go up ten floors -- suddenly now you're in a completely different
plane.

------
alfanick
Schedulers for Multi must be fun - I'm sure they must have employed a whole
research group for solving this problem. Scheduling simple elavator systems is
still a problem nowadays, this one? It's so much harder.

~~~
minus7
Sounds like it'd be a fun game

~~~
stdclass
[http://play.elevatorsaga.com/](http://play.elevatorsaga.com/)

There you go. Lost so many hours playing this game though.

~~~
lkbm
Thank you for sharing this. I've also now lost quite a few hours to it. Also
got two of my coworkers into it.

------
samstave
My dad was is an elevator repair man, has been for the last 33 years. When I
asked him what he thought about his job, he said "just like any other, it has
its ups and downs"

But after seeing this, now we are going back and forth on the future of the
industry!

------
SomewhatLikely
Accelerating and decelerating in line with gravity is a lot more forgiving on
the occupants than lateral accelerations. Seems like this would put a big
limit on horizontal movement.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Depends on whether or not the car can 'tilt' while it is moving sideways (I
know they don't show it doing so). If it can then any amount of acceleration
can be presented as 'up' and 'down' force to the occupants much like a plane.

~~~
ant6n
Well, tilting itself involves acceleration, which will be perceived
differently in different parts of the cabin... So there are still and issues.

~~~
ChuckMcM
When combined with the acceleration they are indistinguishable. I got a chance
to ride in the full motion simulator at NASA Ames and it used this 'trick' to
recenter itself after it had made a left or right motion. Inside you felt
nothing, like the system was unmoving but outside it was moving the flight pod
back to the center of motion so that it had maximum reach for the next
maneuver.

I'm sure the TK folks could manage it. The trick is that the 'tilt' of the car
on the linear motor would add an additional degree of freedom to deal with.
And yet it would be expensive but they seem to have already crossed that
bridge :-)

------
rl12345
Beautifully made and well-structured video. In just 120 seconds, they
effectively:

I. Set the stage by showing a trend.

II. Describe two premises and derive a logical conclusion from them.

III. Show a product that not only is the objective answer to the conclusion
above but also fits perfectly into the initial narrative.

------
todd8
Kind of reminds me of IP packets, but of people not bits. They could even
travel underground from building to building and then we would have an
internet of elevators transmitting packets of people (hopefully with reliable
delivery and no dropped packets).

------
kentf
So many negative comments for a Saturday. This is a marvel of engineering and
deserves a celebration. Humbled by our ability to re-invent more and more.
Well done to all involved.

~~~
riffic
Simplicity in design should be what we celebrate, and things that actually
make it into production. All this is for now is a slick video.

~~~
lathiat
It is actually in production, here's the working test version in a tower they
built just for it, by Tom Scott:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdTsbFS4xmI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdTsbFS4xmI)

And it has it's first production project in the OVG East Side Tower Berlin
(though not yet finished building)

------
samstave
The real problem I see with this, is the complexity of the components required
to make anything seen in this video is orders of magnitudes more that vertical
shaft versions -- thus the cost of an elevator will me massive.

What are the seismic implications - the tolerances on the XY intersections are
surely tight.

How the hell would you inspect some of the complex systems.

You would need a sensor car that just roams the tracks measuring tolerance
levels - make it a service car that repairmen can be in which has no walls.
You'd be more cost effective putting all your large sensor objects in a car as
opposed to thousands of them throughout the system

What happens when a rotating intersection piece fails and its the only route a
car can take/the piece fails with a car on that portion of track - there is no
door/escape/access to the passengers in that scenario.

Also - the building would require extra height to accommodate horizontal
passages if the intersection between XY cant happen at ingress/egress points.
If they _DO_ happen at such points - what happens when E1 wants to go right
and E2 wants to go left. one car need to give way, then get back on track to
go... routing conflicts could occur frequently - like the skyway connectors
between towers where that Sim takes the car from tower1 to tower2 but he gets
out of the middle of a row of doors....

And as mentioned, elevators are already not that cheap - I don think all but
the Nakatomi Plaza and Ono Sendai HQ buildings could afford these yet...

Actually - There are buildings with primary structural elements on there
external (HSBC Building in Hong Kong, for example) -- So I could see this as
an external bolt-on layer to the side of a building - as opposed to a network
of tunnels and shafts throughout - but then that eliminates a majority of the
horizontal movement, unless it wraps onto two sides of a building...

------
saidajigumi
Excellent, looks like we’re finally on the path to the turbolifts from _Star
Trek_!

~~~
joatmon-snoo
I was thinking more along the line of Willy Wonka's glass elevators :p

------
nneonneo
The resulting internal transportation network enabled by this system resembles
a public transit tramway system more than it resembles a traditional elevator
system - and I'm willing to bet that isn't accidental. As skyscrapers become
bigger and more ubiquitous, it seems natural that their internal transit
systems would get correspondingly more complex, and borrowing from public
transit seems like a perfectly natural way to solve the problem.

Plus, in this system all the elevators are centrally scheduled and therefore
there won't be any concern about human drivers fouling up the system :)

~~~
closeparen
Interesting point. Buildings that are very large on the horizontal plane (like
the Pentagon) have adopted systems of personal transport like bicycles and
Segways. But I guess there's no reason why the elevator model shouldn't work
horizontally.

Still, elevators in general are more like ridesharing than public transit:
they move according to the requests they receive in real time (with some
central planning influence), rather than on a schedule set by committee months
or years prior.

------
the8472
Getting closer to Turbolifts. Canonically they form a network throughout the
ship, use induction motors, can also go sideways, have multiple cabins in the
shafts, switch routes etc. No inertial dampeners of course.

------
Naushad
Interesting, they are basically Trains running vertically switching tracks.

------
kumarvvr
Impressive video. The implementation looks complicated and might have
reliability issues.

Wonder what tech they use for traction while moving vertically.

~~~
nabla9
They have to have a good plan for cases when things break and electricity is
not available. Firemen and maintenance crews must be able to rescue people
from the elevators stuck in positions with minimum training and tools.

------
Overtonwindow
Anytime I see something about elevators I am reminded of this amazingly
detailed, and highly engrossing article on the life and history of elevators.

[http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/04/21/up-and-then-
dow...](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/04/21/up-and-then-down)

------
lathiat
Here's a tour of the system in their test tower by Tom Scott:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdTsbFS4xmI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdTsbFS4xmI)

And it has it's first production project in the OVG East Side Tower Berlin
(though not yet finished building)

------
martinko
There already are rope-free elevators, for instance: \- the hydraulic elevator
([https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-lFWNDQDN2hE/T3nbR7woCAI/AAAAAAAAB...](https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-lFWNDQDN2hE/T3nbR7woCAI/AAAAAAAABgs/7G0JKEacDJI/s1600/holed+1.JPG))

-the Paternoster ([http://www.audioguideportal.de/assets/Foto/thumbnail520x397/...](http://www.audioguideportal.de/assets/Foto/thumbnail520x397/1093_rp_mainz_kaiserstrasse5_paternoster_08_2001_mlpreiss.jpg))

The post title is just clickbait for a ThyssenKrupp commercial, plus it only
shows animations of these new elevators. Yawn.

~~~
devdoomari
I'd rather not ride a paternoster --- seems quite likely to function as an
execution machine :(

~~~
ManuelKiessling
There are several Paternosters in operation where I work (HBC Europe HQ in
Cologne), and they are very cleverly designed in subtle ways to work around
the likelihood of an execution.

------
ajarmst
Poor choice of title. It may be the first direct-drive or non-linear elevator,
but rope and cable-free hydraulic elevators have been in service for decades.

------
Overtonwindow
Aside, for those interested in the music behind the video, it's an original
composition, and you can learn more and download it here: [http://www.urban-
hub.com/de/people/der-videoproduzent-der-mu...](http://www.urban-
hub.com/de/people/der-videoproduzent-der-multi-filmreif-in-szene-setzte/)

------
leeoniya
looks expensive to build, purchase and maintain.

not sure there's anything "revolutionary" here.

~~~
sharpercoder
If the rails are solid state using for example magnetic levitation, I can see
this being much cheaper to maintain.

~~~
samstave
Ever been in an elevator during a power outage?

~~~
mschuster91
No problem either - do it like on freefall towers or on other park
attractions, where eddy current brakes, fully passive, are employed as safety
mechanism.

~~~
dom0
All elevators have multiple safety brakes working on their guide rails (this
is the famous invention of Otis); so do these. Besides batteries lasting
longer (two hours, they say) than the median European power outage.

------
riffic
Wow, just more over-engineered mechanical shit that will break down in
spectacular ways.

------
DanBlake
Looks to be about.... 10? times the cost of a normal elevator if I had to
guess. I bet the maintenance costs are fun as well. As such, doubt you will
see these except in niche buildings (things like the porsche tower, etc..)

~~~
the8472
The tallest skyscrapers have issues with elevators because the cables can only
be so long before they snap under their own weight, so you need elevator
changing floors, which take up space and lower throughput. Either you find
flexible materials with a higher tensile-strength to weight ratio than steel
or you forego cables entirely.

~~~
dom0
Classic elevators also need a lot of floor space to achieve good throughput.
This system is basically like a paternoster on steroids; it can rise much
higher, move much faster, use arbitrary circuits and has none of the safety
issues. Even if this system only saves, say, 40 % floor space, it'd still be a
win for many projects.

------
amai
I posted this more than 2 weeks ago and nobody seemed interested:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14807079](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14807079)

------
ChristianGeek
Am I the only one who noticed that the first elevator shown in the video,
while the narrator discussed the birth of the elevator in 1854, is gear-based
and hence rope-free?!

~~~
Animats
That's Otis's original safety elevator, and it was a rope system. The
innovation was that it had a mechanism to stop it if the rope broke.

~~~
ChristianGeek
Ah, thanks for the clarification...the animation made it look like it was the
gear system that was controlling the movement.

~~~
Animats
The animation is a redraw of this picture.[1] It's one of the most famous
demos in history.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Elisha_OTIS_1854.jpg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Elisha_OTIS_1854.jpg)

------
londons_explore
My ideal elevator would accelerate at a pleasant 4 m/s^2 and have a jerk not
exceeding 4 m/s^3. It would have doors that close instantly when the doorway
is clear, and start right away.

That would be able to take me up a 100 yard high building in 11 seconds.

Why can't real elevators be like that? Why must the doors move slowly, and
wait for 5 seconds before even starting moving? Why does the elevator reach a
sluggish top speed, even with very little load? Why when arriving at the
destination floor does it take a further 2 or 3 seconds for the door to open?

~~~
LoSboccacc
People with reduced mobility or reduced vision will love instant closing
guilliotines.

~~~
jjoonathan
The door closing mechanism is designed with limited power and there's an
optical sensor to prevent it from even trying to close on someone. Why
wouldn't that still be the case on a fast closing door?

More tellingly: fast closing doors are absolutely a thing, so clearly the
safety issues are not insurmountable, but I only see them in more
modern/expensive locations. I suspect it's a price grading move and if you
wait another century fast-closing doors will be everywhere.

~~~
LoSboccacc
Yeah but the faster they go the more inertia the whole thing has to handle for
those safety mechanism, right? And the added machinery weight impacts on the
elevator loading as well.

~~~
jjoonathan
Yes, but there are ways of dealing with inertia. Like making the door lighter
and putting padding on the contact surfaces. It's not rocket science.

Also, most of the improvement would come from replacing the worst offenders
(5-10 second closing times) rather than from shaving 1 second times to 1/2 a
second, and there's tons of precedent for the former from the faster-closing
10% or so of existing installations.

------
mabbo
This will be how we build towers twice as tall as existing megatowers.

As beautifully explained by xkcd[0], "If your building has lots of floors, you
need lots of different elevators, since there would be so many people trying
to come and go the same time. If you make a building too tall, the whole thing
gets taken up by elevators and there's no space for regular rooms."

But if one elevator shaft can have multiple independent cars, suddenly you've
got a huge capacity multiplier without the space costs.

The horizontal motion part is cute, but I don't think it will matter nearly as
much.

[0][https://what-if.xkcd.com/94/](https://what-if.xkcd.com/94/)

~~~
robotresearcher
The car motion is not independent and it's hard to use the capacity well.
Consider the morning rush in a big office tower when everyone starts on the
ground floor. You can only use the bottom car to move these people.

You need a sideways dimension of movement to avoid this problem.

~~~
notatoad
>You need a sideways dimension of movement to avoid this problem.

you mean like the elevator system being discussed here?

~~~
robotresearcher
Yes. I was replying to this comment:

> But if one elevator shaft can have multiple independent cars, suddenly
> you've got a huge capacity multiplier without the space costs.

> The horizontal motion part is cute, but I don't think it will matter nearly
> as much.

My point is: 1\. Stacked cars are not independent. 2\. Horizontal motion
matters a lot.

------
GrayShade
I think the routing algorithms could be interesting. It's funny to think about
the possibility of gridlocked elevators.

------
PhasmaFelis
One issue I haven't seen addressed is that the horizontal shafts will block
foot traffic through the building.

~~~
dredmorbius
Solutions: Have an elevator plane on the building -- shafts and corridors
which are all located at one extreme side of the building, rather than the
core.

And/or have horizontal transit floors. You don't need horizontal transit at
_every_ floor, just sufficiently frequently to accomplish lateral transfers.

------
cable2600
One step closer to the Wonkavader. Which always freaked me out that it could
move anywhere and even fly.

------
dingo_bat
This is awesome! Hopefully this means the elevator can now directly open into
my apartment!

~~~
veli_joza
This is exciting possibility, but I would expect the builders will try to
minimize the volume taken by shaft. Corridors are less expensive to build and
maintain than these high-tech shafts.

------
revelation
Soo many machined pieces... wonder if that is the production design.

------
SeeDave
Absolutely incredible video, and great product!

------
panic
Looking forward to playing SimTower Multi!

------
armitron
Reminded me of CPU interconnects.

~~~
sabujp
crossbar

------
leeoniya
what problem does this solve to justify the crazy expense, complexity and
maintenance?

the reason elevators exist is because people cannot easily climb 100+ vertical
ft, especially while carrying stuff.

on the other hand, humans are well adapted for horizontal travel - 15mi per
day without breaking a sweat. and when they're not, there are movable walkways
like in airports.

this whole thing is a solution looking for a problem, IMO. we don't yet live
in Matrix-style human incubators with miles of horizontal travel in buildings
that are _also_ miles high - it's usually either/or, and not because we've
been lacking these revolutionary elevators.

~~~
chki
If those elevators worked they would actually solve a big engineering problem:
Very High Buildings can only have a limited number of elevator shafts. But it
takes a significant time to use them which makes it problematic if there are a
lot of people who want to go. But if elevators were able to travel
horizontally that is a first step towards having multiple elevators in one
shaft. There are still other problems that need to be solved in order to do
this but if it works you can easily transport a lot of people in skyscrapers
by having one "upwards" shaft and one "down" shaft which the elevator capsule
can change between by moving horizontally.

~~~
leeoniya
you can have dedicated up and down shafts where the cars move horizontally
only at the top and bottom, like a ferris wheel. without having them move
horizontally at any floor. you just need a way to disconnect the rope (like
ski lifts). or you can have towing cars that have only 50 ft of rope and
operate on rails (like ships that get towed through Panama locks)

~~~
russdill
That means that all cars must traverse the entire distance and that all cars
must wait each time a car reaches a floor.

~~~
leeoniya
> That means that all cars must traverse the entire distance

with a lot of cars in uni-directional shafts, is this really an issue?

> all cars must wait each time a car reaches a floor

maybe solved by a 2-lane shaft with a passing lane. very doable with rails or
towing cars.

~~~
icebraining
How can you have multiple cars in a single shaft, using the rope system? To
what would the second car from the ceiling be hanging on?

~~~
leeoniya
> very doable with rails or towing cars.

~~~
icebraining
Ah, right. But then, isn't that what they've done here?

------
dclowd9901
I hate to be so cynical, but for how often the TK elevator in our building is
out of service (these things have been around for 100 years and still break
down more than a Fiat), I don't have the confidence necessary to step foot in
this thing.

~~~
stinos
Came to post a similar comment. Of course it's anecdotal, but in our old
building we had a +20 years old Schindler's lift (yes that sounds very close
to Schindler's List, the joke is never far away) and in the 5 years I was
there I never saw them failing. In a new building no single month passes by
without one of the TK elevators needing servicing, at worst multiple times a
week. And if they're in service there are still always chances they forget the
floor entered or one of the special programs for limited access areas stops
working. Definitely software problems but might also be hardware related
sometimes. Like the doors sliding open a couple of mm then closing again,
until the technician shows up once again. I know that doesn't mean all their
products are like that and maybe human error is at fault here, but it
ceryainly does not leave the same good impression as the Schindler's ones.

~~~
icebraining
My previous workplace had a couple of Schindlers, which failed multiple times
per year.

------
netsharc
Off-topic, who is the narrator? I think I've heard him on another German
"corporate presentation" video, and I can hear a slight German accent...

And back on-topic, googling to find the details instead of just a flashy
video, here's Tom Scott on MULTI:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdTsbFS4xmI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdTsbFS4xmI)

~~~
dom0
He sounds somewhat similar to the kurzgesagt voice-over artist.

------
jjoe
This might read a bit odd and tangential but I cringe every time I get into a
ThyssenKrupp elevator. Thyssen and Krupp were huge fans of Hitler and the
Nazis. The two families donated large sums of money to their cause. They both
benefited from Hitler's support and promoted the use of forced labor.
ThyssenKrupp is largely seen as a Hitler firm in many circles.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThyssenKrupp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThyssenKrupp)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krupp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krupp)

[2] [http://spartacus-educational.com/GERthyssen.htm](http://spartacus-
educational.com/GERthyssen.htm)

~~~
pm90
Many of the progenitors of modern Japanese companies were heavily involved in
assisting the Imperial Japanese government during WW2 as well. Although US did
dismantle a lot of the zaibatsu's after the war.

