The Verge has a nice piece on the history of the Walkman, which is apparently now 35 years old. I think I became aware of what a Walkman was sometime right before the yellow “Sports” version came out. I never actually owned a real tape Walkman, but had a few of the Minidisc ones and of course some CD players.
Source The Verge
I had the original. Mine wasn’t blue as the photo shows, but a cool smoked deep grey. It had two audio jacks (share away) and the big orange button attenuated the sound and activated a microphone — if someone spoke with you (your sharing partner, perhaps) while listening, you’d here all through your headphones. Volume was controlled by two L-R sliders, which was equally cool and tedious. I’ve owned a lot of Walkmans and Discmans, that was my favorite hands down.
and minidisk could be an amazing alternative for iomega floppies that time, what a wasted opportunity…
Wow. Relics of the past. I had a few of them – my favorite was the yellow Sport version. It was freaking waterproof! I used to bring it in the pool with me. Tapes were amazing.
That jogged my memory. Had to look up the specific model I owned:
http://tinyurl.com/mwtag2r
Did anyone have one of these?
http://tinyurl.com/ntd4jnr
I remember using this non-stop in early 80s. Was a car stereo that would pull out as a walkman. Thanks dad for letting me listen to music all the way to MA to FL every year!
Plus my giant Radioshack headphones that I wore off the foam to.
http://tinyurl.com/o4uuaeq