Dr. Yoshiro NakaMatsu holds the record for inventions, according to the Guiness Book of World Records, with over 3200 to his credit-three times that of his closest rival, Thomas Edison. Dr Nakamat's inventions include the floppy disk, the CD, the DVD, the digital watch, cinemascope and the taxi cab meter.

The NakaMats method of invention involves diving underwater without an oxygen tank or snorkel and staying below the surface for as long as possible until an idea bubbles up. Upon resurfacing, he then writes down the idea on a dripping-wet Plexiglas tablet. When asked if all that underwater breathing was dangerous to his health, he said yes, but that dying was not part of his research.

NakaMats, doesn’t mind being called eccentric. He is a graduate of the University of Tokyo and completed a doctorate program in engineering. Now seventy-eight years old, NakaMats refers to himself as a middle-aged man, thanks to his theory of longevity.

His most creative time is between midnight and 4 a.m., and then he gets four hours’ sleep. NakaMats believes that if you sleep more than six hours in any twenty-four-hour period, your brainpower decreases. He eats only one meal a day—at dinner—with a maximum of seven hundred calories. He also photographs every dish he eats to recall the stimulating ones.

NakaMats doesn’t drink or smoke, and does daily weight lifting and swimming. He is a big advocate of the twenty-minute power nap in the special Cerebrex chair that he, of course, invented.
NakaMats’s inventive career started at five years old, when he came up with the idea for a landing stabilizer for his model airplane. A few years later he saw his mother struggling to pour kerosene out of a big container, so he devised an automatic pump. His mother was a schoolteacher and encouraged her son to build models of his inventions and then helped him apply for patents.

His biggest success came in 1950 when, as a student at the University of Tokyo, he manufactured the floppy disk. After six of Japan’s leading corporations turned down his request to have them produce the floppy disk, he granted the sales license for the disk to IBM, which now holds the patents for sixteen of his inventions.
While studying or working on his inventions NakaMats usually listened to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony on 78 rpm records.  He kept getting distracted by the hissing sounds from dust and popping sounds from scratches on the records. So he realized he must create a higher quality recording device and the CD was born.

There’s a “techie” adage in Asia that the nail that stands up in Asia gets hammered down, while the nail that stands up in Silicon Valley drives a Ferrari and has stock options. Having developed a complete ideation process of freedom, expression, creation, and action, Dr. NakaMats is a nail that keeps standing taller with each new invention.

Sourced from: www.whatagreatidea.com/nakamatsu.htm