Mitsubishi Heavy Industries
is a Japanese multinational engineering, electrical equipment and electronics corporation headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. MHI is one of the core companies of the Mitsubishi Group and its automobile division is the predecessor of Mitsubishi Motors. MHI's products include aerospace and automotive components, air conditioners, elevators, forklift trucks, hydraulic equipment, printing machines, missiles, tanks, power systems, ships, aircraft, railway systems, and space launch vehicles. Through its defense-related activities, it is the world's 23rd-largest defense contractor measured by 2011 defense revenues and the largest based in Japan. In 1857, at the request of the Tokugawa Shogunate, a group of Dutch engineers were invited, including Dutch naval engineer Hendrik Hardes, and began work on the Nagasaki Yotetsusho 長崎鎔鉄所 , a modern, Western-style foundry and shipyard near the Dutch settlement of Dejima, at Nagasaki. This was renamed Nagasaki Seitetsusho 長崎製鉄所 Nagasaki Iron (Steel) Foundry in 1860, and construction was completed in 1861. Following the Meiji Restoration of 1868, the shipyard was placed under control of the new Government of Meiji Japan. The first dry dock was completed in 1879. In 1884, Yataro Iwasaki, the founder of Mitsubishi, leased the Nagasaki Seitetsusho from the Japanese government, renamed it the Nagasaki Shipyard & Machinery Works 長崎 造船 機械工 and entered the shipbuilding business on a large scale. Iwasaki purchased the shipyards outright in 1887. In 1891, "Mitsubishi Heavy Industries - Yokohama Machinery Works" was started as Yokohama Dock Company, Ltd. Its main business was ship repairs, to which it added ship servicing by 1897. The works was renamed Mitsubishi Shipyard of Mitsubishi Goshi Kaisha in 1893 and additional dry docks were completed in 1896 and 1905. The "Mitsubishi Heavy Industries - Shimonoseki Shipyard & Machinery Works" was established in 1914. It produced industrial machinery and merchant ships. The Nagasaki company was renamed Mitsubishi Shipbuilding & Engineering Company, Ltd.