Walkman @ 40 years

On this day 40 years ago Sony released the Walkman, was a portable cassette player that changed listening habits by allowing people to listen to music on the move. It was devised by Sony cofounder Masaru Ibuka, who felt Sony's existing portable player was too unwieldy and expensive.

A prototype was built from a modified Sony Pressman, a compact tape recorder designed for journalists.
A model that is highly sought after is Sony’s TPS-L2. It was the world’s first mass-produced Walkman – the one where it all began.
It was launched in 1979 and is recognisable by its blue and silver casing. You might have spotted the TPS-L2 in Marvel's 'Guardians of the Galaxy'. The main character, Peter Quill (played by Chris Pratt), uses the Sony Walkman to listen to a mixtape he received from his mother when he was a child. Although Quill is in a far away galaxy and surrounded by advanced technology, he prefers the vintage cassette player. The movie boosted the popularity of the Walkman and thanks to this retro revolution, prices skyrocketed. They can fetch a few hundred, up to even a thousand euros!

I know as I swapped 2 Lada's for mine and that was when they were still available
these days these babes have been replaced by the cell phone.

They brought music to the factory shop floors in the early '80's.

Hard to get people's attention unless they were looking right at you with head phones hidden under their ear muff hearing protection. Lol.

Then the sound faded on one channel and spent hours trying to fix that break or spend another $10? on a new headset ....lol

They evolved ... ~shudders~
~drinks~

Holy fuck! I've got a couple of the walkmans with cassette and radio, and afaik one of them works. I'm finna put 'em on Ebay. It was such a great move to have a personal music listening experience as opposed to carrying a huge boombox and forcing everyone around you to listen to your crappy music. Unfortunately what's old is new again, and teenagers and millennials seem to be ditching their headphones for huge bluetooth speakers that they carry around in backpacks. So again we're forced to listen to their crap music. A couple weeks ago I was sitting quietly on the benches at the end of a bike path with a few other people, when such a teenager pulled up with his crappy/trappy music blaring at full volume. Everyone looked instantly annoyed, so I leaned over and said to the teenager, 'We were all just enjoying our surroundings until you pulled up and ruined it. You mind turning that down?' He just scowled at me, and took off a few minutes later. Sorry for squashing your attempt to ruin our day, excuse the fuck out of me...