The Walkman, Forty Years On

Reminds me of how much Sony (along with Braun) shaped Apple’s hardware design language. And that in turn keeps on shaping many others.<p>And the walkman is arguably one of the classic cases of “build it, and they will come”, where a product was well ahead of what consumers were already calling for. In my mind, that’s the kind of thing actually deserving the <i>visionary</i> label.

I recently had an opportunity to check out a drive-in movie theatre, and was very excited at the idea until I remembered that the FM radio in our car was messed up (we never use it). I dug through the garage and found my old Walkman still in a pile of high school stuff. Cleaned it up, installed batteries, cycled the volume rheostat until it was cleaned up and the static stopped...and POOF perfect FM radio again! I brought headphones and had a great time.

There&#x27;s a big community of ambient&#x2F;electronic musicians that are still using these things. They are popular for recording&#x2F;playing tape loops and making tape delays. I bought some recently to convert into a makeshift mellotron (they still run ~$15 on ebay!). [1] Also there seems to still be enough demand to fund kickstarters for new fancy cassette players. [2]<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;schollz.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;tape-synth&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;schollz.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;tape-synth&#x2F;</a><p>[2]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.kickstarter.com&#x2F;projects&#x2F;wearerewind&#x2F;we-are-rewind" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.kickstarter.com&#x2F;projects&#x2F;wearerewind&#x2F;we-are-rewi...</a>

Sony TC-50 is a cassette recorder that could be considered as a predecessor to the Walkman; it even went to the moon with the Apollo 11 crew [1].<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kottke.org&#x2F;19&#x2F;07&#x2F;sonys-proto-walkman-that-went-to-the-moon" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kottke.org&#x2F;19&#x2F;07&#x2F;sonys-proto-walkman-that-went-to-th...</a><p>Off-topic question:<p>Since this is a thread on Walkman I&#x27;d like to ask you on any dedicated music player that you&#x27;d recommend?

I got myself a WM-701C [0], which was considered to be the pinnacle of Walkman design at the time. Incredibly thin with a &#x27;remote control&#x27; in the headphone cord.<p>Mine was heavily used as I did about 20km&#x2F;day on a bike ( in NL this is just commute + paper round, nothing special ) for quite a few years.<p>I had some trouble finding it, but hey on the internet everything exists, the Walkman Archive!<p>[0] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.walkman-archive.com&#x2F;gadgets&#x2F;walkman_sony_05_701c_v3.htm" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.walkman-archive.com&#x2F;gadgets&#x2F;walkman_sony_05_701c_...</a>

Was the Walkman any better than its competitors? I was only a toddler at the time but a few years later EVERYONE made personal cassette players, at way lower prices than Sony.<p>But it wasn’t like with a generic “MP3 player”, a generic cassette player wasn’t really missing anything that the Walkman had (except for the very low end models that were in the cheapest price bracket). I remember one model that only had reverse and not fast forward, for example.

Pulling up some Walkman&#x2F;Discman designs from Sony, Aiwa, Panasonic (etc) just makes me want to buy one.<p>Somewhere after the IPhone 4&#x2F;5, phone designs started to homogenize into that mostly large screen, rounded corners, and mostly became uninteresting.<p>Business laptops have mostly settled on the MacBook design, Gaming laptops are still coming in weird interesting designs:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;ASUS-Zephyrus-i7-7700HQ-Processor-Professional&#x2F;dp&#x2F;B071XDXLPG" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;ASUS-Zephyrus-i7-7700HQ-Processor-Pro...</a>

There was a post on HN the other day where the Instagram algo was discussed - look at something once and see it for the next three weeks.<p>Oddly, at some point it&#x27;s decided I like to see pictures of old hifi equipment and Walkmans in particular. Turns out there&#x27;s a massive community of collectors and displayers, and the pictures are actually pretty great.<p>It also reminded me just how great &#x27;tech&#x27; was back then. I was a kid in the 80s and a teen in the 90s and it brought back memories of just how magical it all felt! Technology didn&#x27;t feel like it was iterating as quickly, and things like a tiny Walkman with tiny earbud headphones playing a tape of a new band your friend had found, in a world that wasn&#x27;t instant and connected - was <i>everything</i>.<p>...I remember when all this was fields... <i>Sigh</i>.

Somewhat related.<p>How far are we on having wireless earpods&#x2F;earphones streaming music directly from the satellites? No phones or internet required.

TIL that the Walkman was sold as the Freestyle here in Sweden, which is why that word was adopted for any kind of portable music player.<p>It&#x27;s one of those fun corners where Swedish contains an English word for something, which doesn&#x27;t match the word actually used by people speaking English. :) This might be what linguists call a &quot;false friend&quot;, but I&#x27;m not sure. I also love the German &quot;beamer&quot; (=video projector) in this category.

I found my Walkman, a WMF-100 from 1988 or &#x27;89, last year while going through a box of stuff I had saved:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;d1RqfVT.jpg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;d1RqfVT.jpg</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;11LWVnw.jpg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;11LWVnw.jpg</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;PARDWpn.jpg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;PARDWpn.jpg</a><p>It&#x27;s in very used shape, the battery leaked and the face plate with the tuning frequency is loose. I remember buying it at Crazy Eddie&#x27;s in NJ to replace the yellow sports walkman I managed to destroy.

I can&#x27;t begin to describe how much I used to dread when the batteries would begin to get depleted which would slow down the motor turning the cassette and distort the sound being produced.

Boom boxes have made a comeback. Some phones are pretty loud. You can buy a lightweight sound amplifier to add to a phone. People use these hiking, running, biking, at picnics, etc.

I only saw four features which I thought added value to a walkthing<p>1) dual headphone output. Sharing is cool!<p>2) a microphone. This changed journalism from niche device with dictation cassette to street journalist. Democratisation of news followed a trend down from a five person crew to two or one as VHS came in.<p>3) l and r separated volume. Only saw it once but for cheap stereo it meant you could do music minus one and dial down vocals on one channel<p>4) tape speed change. Autotune for free!

One totally genius design feature of the Walkman was the fact that it had two headphone jacks. Together with music ripping and mix tapes, this was the beginning of music sharing, and eventually the downfall of the monolithic music industries. Truly a disruptive innovation.

I think they must be overstating the thing about headphones being unprecedented. Episode 1 of the sitcom “Dobie Gillis”, from 1959, introduces Bob Denver’s character by showing him listening to a transistor radio using an earpiece

90s technology struggles (4 min comedy video) [NSFW] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=23730689" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=23730689</a>

Frank Black&#x27;s love song to the Ramones is as much a love song to the Walkman. ;-)<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;oGbbwBET-p4" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;oGbbwBET-p4</a>

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.is&#x2F;0xYH4" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.is&#x2F;0xYH4</a>

Still have my WM-2.

I don&#x27;t like that website. Do they really need fixed bars on the top <i>and</i> bottom asking me to subscribe? Not to mention article is littered with ads and a half screen nag as soon as you start scrolling.