The name of the Sharp Corp. goes back to the first well-known product of the company, the Ever-Sharp Pencil, which was a rather stylish (even by today's standards) mechanical pencil. SHARP was founded in 1912 by Tokuji Hayakawa - whose heirs can still be found working for SHARP.
Todays product range includes everything from LCD displays to computers, copiers, consumer electronics, cash registers and ultrasonic washing machines. SHARP employs about 60000 people world-wide, a huge amount of them in R&D. (About ten percent of the profit supposedly are spent in SHARP Labs - the companies research brand.)
The currently best-known SHARP product in Hackerdom is most likely the SL-5500 Linux-based PDA, which will even run Nethack.