As the story goes , Sony co-founder Masaru Ibuka got the wheels turning months before when he asked for a way to listen to opera that was more portable than Sony's existing TC-D5 cassette players. The charge fell to Sony designer Norio Ohga, who built a prototype out of Sony's Pressman cassette recorder in time for Ibuka's next flight.
After a disappointing first month of sales, the Walkman went on to become one of Sony's most successful brands of all time, transitioning formats over the years into CD, Mini-Disc, MP3 and finally, streaming music. Over million Walkman portable music players have been sold, million of them cassette players.
Sony retired the classic cassette tape Walkman line in , and was forced to pay a huge settlement to the original inventor of the portable cassette player, Andreas Pavel. But the name lives on today in the form of new MP3 players and Sony's Walkman app.
They heyday of the Walkman may be over, with kids today baffled and disgusted by the relative clumsiness of cassettes. But the habit it spawned — listening to music wherever and whenever you want — is bigger than ever. Cookie banner We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing experience on our site, show personalized content and targeted ads, analyze site traffic, and understand where our audiences come from.
The inventor of the Walkman thought people would want to listen to music together, so he put two headphone jacks on the player remember that the headphones went over your head instead of the earphones most of us use today, where you can share one pair between two people.
This meant you could talk to someone without having to take your headphones off. Both of these features were later removed from the Walkman because people didn't use them. This is important as it shows a change in what was considered the norm. Previously, walking around with headphones would have been seen as rude and antisocial, but it soon became accepted behaviour. The Sony Walkman cassette player revolutionised the way that we listen to music. It enabled people to create soundtracks to their lives in ways that hadn't been possible before.
The fact that you could use your Walkman anywhere changed that; music had never been so personal. It was the first in a long line of portable audio players, and without it, we might not have the same objects such as iPods and MP3 players that we do today. Sony have sold over million units since their first release, with million of those being cassette players! Dieter Rams was so concerned with 'Good' design that he came up with 10 principles of good design.
Find out more here. Leaving a message for a friend or making a page in a text book Design influences our lives and can be found in every aspect of our day.
He asked Norio Ohga, then Executive Deputy President, to design a playback-only stereo version, optimized for use with headphones. Don't you think a stereo cassette player that you can listen to while walking around is a good idea?
All the device needed now was a name. Originally the Walkman was introduced in the U. First released in Japan, it was a massive hit: while Sony predicted it would only sell about 5, units a month, the Walkman sold upwards of 50, in the first two months. Sony wasn't the first company to introduce portable audio: the first-ever portable transistor radio, the index card-sized Regency TR-1, debuted in But the Walkman's unprecedented combination of portability it ran on two AA batteries and privacy it featured a headphone jack but no external speaker made it the ideal product for thousands of consumers looking for a compact portable stereo that they could take with them anywhere.
The s could well have been the Walkman decade. By the word "Walkman" had entered the Oxford English Dictionary. Its launch coincided with the birth of the aerobics craze, and millions used the Walkman to make their workouts more entertaining.
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