Founded in Japan in 1920, Mazda began as the Toyo Cork Kogyo Co. Manufacturing machine tools then moving to vehicles, with the introduction of the Mazda-Go in 1931, the company also supplied the Japanese military throughout the Second World War, with variations of the Type 99 rifle. In the 1960s, Mazda put a major engineering effort into development of the Wankel rotary engine and formally entered the North American market in 1970.