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The first Walkman

The Walkman is Sony’s portable audio cassette player (but the name is also used in slang for any portable cassette player).

“Back up”, says the kiddies, “WTF is audio cassette?” Audio cassettes along with vinyl records, are what people listened to before CDs. CDs are those round things people who don’t have ipods listen to. Audio cassettes can be recorded on. They kind of look like mini videotapes. “Back up! Did you video tape?” Video tapes is those thing your parents used in their VCR to watch movies on before they had a DVD player, this is what your mom used to record her soap operas on before there was TiVo or PVR. They are also called compact cassettes, cassette tapes or tapes. A cassette has 2 reels, one spool that feeds and one spool that receives. The tape is electro magnetic format on which sound can be recorded.

Tape. Not the actual size.

Sony’s Walkman was created in 1978 and went on sale in 1979. The first model was TPS-L2 and it came in blue-and-silver. When it came out in the UK it had 2 headphone jacks so that 2 friends could listen at the same time.

Some of the subsequent Walkman devices were capable of recording sound. The top model in this category was Walkman Professional WM-D6C (1984), which was also used by journalists.

Walkmans are powered by AC-mains or AA-batteries.

Every 5 years from 1979-1999 Sony came out with a special anniversary edition Walkman that would be technologically more advanced than its predecessors. The Walkman was hugely popular in the 80s until the early 90s when people began to favour CD players and digital devices. On the 25th anniversary Sony decided they would no longer bring out special edition cassette players. Even though cassette based Walkmans became almost obsolete in the 21st century, they are still being produced.

Sony also made CD, video and digital Walkmans, but the cassette player was the original.

These days, people don’t really use cassettes to listen to music, but cassettes are used in some cases for language learning. I’ve used cassettes for language learning and wasn’t impressed. Cassettes can easily get worn out or chewed up by cassette players. Seriously, couldn’t they give me the language lessons on CD or mp3?

It’s amazing to think that we can have portable music players a fraction of the size of a Walkman, that can store hundreds of songs and has a rechargeable internal battery. We have definitely been spoilt by mp3 players, but it’s cool to remember were portable music players come from.

Next time you buy an iPod, think about how far we’ve come. I wonder if I’d be able to find one of the original Walkmans in classifieds.

Source: Wikipedia