Hideo Shima was a Japanese engineer and the driving force behind the building of the first bullet train. Shima was born in Osaka in 1901, and educated at the Tokyo Imperial University, where he studied Mechanical Engineering.
Hideo Shima was the developer of Japan’s Shinkansen or bullet train.His father was a part of a group that had built Japan’s then emerging railroad industry. He got educated at Tokyo Imperial University, where he studied engineering. He joined the railway ministry in the year 1925 and later worked for Japanese National Railways (JNR) where he was entrusted with the task of designing steam locomotives. It was during this time that he came up with an innovation which was later also used by bullet trains, that is the trains were driven by the electric motors in the individual rail coach, instead of being pulled by an engine in the front. While working as a top engineer at the former state-run JNR, he designed the Tokaido Shinkansen bullet train network from the initial stage of planning and laying out of tracks to the electric facilities and the unique design of the trains.
The train was named so due to its bullet – shaped nose. It could run at the speed of unto 138 mph when the service began in 1964. Today the bullet trains run at speeds in excess of 500Kmph. On October 1, 1964 the bullet train’s inaugural run between Japan’s two largest cities started. Shima had to resign from his post at JNR in 1963, just a year before bullet train’s service started between Tokyo and Osaka since he took responsibility for high costs on the Shinkansen project.
In 1969 he received the James Watt mechanical engineering award from Britain’s machinery society for his achievements in developing the Shinkansen system.The Japanese government conferred on him the Order of Cultural Merit award in 1994.