Momofuku Ando: Lost almost everything, then invented instant noodles at 48
After a credit union he chaired collapsed in 1957, he worked alone in a shed behind his house in Osaka for a year. The result, Chicken Ramen, went on sale when he was 48.
Business, then ruin
Momofuku Ando was born in 1910 in Taiwan, then under Japanese rule, and ran several businesses in Japan before and after the war. In 1957 a credit union where he was chairman went bankrupt, and he lost nearly all he owned apart from his rented house in Ikeda, Osaka.
A shed and a question
He remembered long queues for noodles at black market stalls in the hungry years after the war. In a small shed behind the house he worked every day for about a year, trying to make noodles that would keep on a shelf and cook with just hot water.
The turn
The answer came from watching tempura being fried: flash frying the seasoned noodles dried them out and left tiny holes for water to get back in. Chicken Ramen went on sale on 25 August 1958, when he was 48.
What came of it
His company, Nissin, followed it with Cup Noodles in 1971, when he was 61. He kept working into his nineties, and museums in Osaka and Yokohama now tell the story with a copy of his shed.
He solved a problem he had seen with his own eyes, by trying again every day. Steady, unglamorous testing is how most useful things get made.
Where the facts come from: Company founder page, nissin.com; Obituary, The New York Times, January 2007.
