It's hard to imagine our lives without portable music--nowadays most of us can fit our entire music collection into an MP3 player the size of a deck of cards. But, 30 years ago, as people hefted boom boxes off their shoulders, they oooh'ed and ahhhh'ed in fascination at a little machine called the Walkman.
Originally, portable cassette players were marketed for people who needed to record audio clips for their work, like journalists and businesspeople, but Sony's Walkman brought the idea of playing cassettes to the masses. Not only did many-a-Walkman have cassette players, AM/FM dials, and dual headphone jacks, they also had cool features like auto-reverse, play, and record.
Pictured here is the first Sony Walkman--the TPS-L2, introduced in 1979 and launched in the U.S. in 1980. This Walkman cost $200 in the U.S. and was called "one of the hottest new status symbols around" by The Wall Street Journal in 1980. Like consumers of today's iPods, people had to wait at least a month to get the TPS-L2 because of a backlog in orders.
Sony sold 30,000 Walkmans in its first two months and 50 million in the following decade. This week, as the Sony Walkman turns 30, CNET decided to take a look at some of the original Walkmans and the top 10 songs from the year they came out.
Originally, portable cassette players were marketed for people who needed to record audio clips for their work, like journalists and businesspeople, but Sony's Walkman brought the idea of playing cassettes to the masses. Not only did many-a-Walkman have cassette players, AM/FM dials, and dual headphone jacks, they also had cool features like auto-reverse, play, and record.
Pictured here is the first Sony Walkman--the TPS-L2, introduced in 1979 and launched in the U.S. in 1980. This Walkman cost $200 in the U.S. and was called "one of the hottest new status symbols around" by The Wall Street Journal in 1980. Like consumers of today's iPods, people had to wait at least a month to get the TPS-L2 because of a backlog in orders.
Sony sold 30,000 Walkmans in its first two months and 50 million in the following decade. This week, as the Sony Walkman turns 30, CNET decided to take a look at some of the original Walkmans and the top 10 songs from the year they came out.
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