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I just heard that the Sony Walkman turns 30 this week. To celebrate, let’s revisit the first time The New York Times gave it a mention, in an article titled “Stereo-to-Go – and Only You Can Hear”:
“Josh Lansing and the young blonde woman had never even met before, but as they passed each other on Madison Avenue the other afternoon, she waved and smiled and he tipped his headphones in salute….What the two well-dressed strangers first noticed about each other was that they were both possessors of the newest status symbol around town: the Walkman, a portable stereo unit (priced in most stores at $200), consisting of an ultra-light headphone set plugged into a cassette player that weighs in at less than 14 ounces, batteries included. ‘It’s just like Mercedes-Benz owners honking when they pass each other on the road,’ explained Mr. Lansing, whose cassette hung from his Gucci belt.”
Originally published July 7, 1980. You can read all the previous installments of ‘The First Time News Was Fit To Print’ here.
Comments (14)
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$200?! Jeeze — obviously new technology always costs more, but for some reason I never thought someone would pay $200 for that. Great flashback, though!!
posted by Melissa on 7-1-2009 at 2:01 pm
July 7, 1980? Would that not make the Walkman 29 years old and not 30?
posted by steve on 7-1-2009 at 2:14 pm
Now gather around, kids, and let me tell you about Walkmans.
At any given time you could have 6 or 7 WHOLE SONGS at your fingertips. Granted, the songs were in a rigid order, but if you didn’t like a song you could FAST FORWARD THRU IT and it only took about 2 minutes. And the cassett tapes had a tendency to stretch and break, but no big deal. You just chuck the broken cassett down a storm drain and pay ten bucks for a new tape!
Now excuse me while I drink some Metamusil.
posted by Sam Saturday on 7-1-2009 at 2:26 pm
The article wasn’t written the day the Walkman was released. It was the first article that the NYT wrote about the Walkman.
posted by Jason English on 7-1-2009 at 2:27 pm
Check out this article:
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8117619.stm
Kid’s dad gave him a Walkman to use for a week to see how he liked it. Needless to say the review was not kind.
posted by SpaceMonkeyX on 7-1-2009 at 2:35 pm
C’mon, Sam, they weren’t THAT bad. Most cassettes were album-length. They held almost as much music as a CD, about 60 minutes or more. And while cassettes did wear out over time, it took a long time and a lot of plays to wear out a tape. I had cassettes that still sounded fine after years of listening to them. I NEVER had a cassette literally break or become unplayable. Plus the ease of copying music for friends and making mix tapes wasn’t replicated on CD until years after CDs launched.
posted by Craig on 7-1-2009 at 3:29 pm
I agree Craig, I still have my Thompson Twins tape and it still plays! Man this article makes me feel old. First Walkman – my 11th birthday 1986.
posted by Sara on 7-1-2009 at 4:56 pm
One of my favorite things about spending a week in the summer with my grandparents was my aunt Donna. She was 10 years older than me and the coolest person I knew. She let me listen to her brand new Walkman. Sometimes, when I close my eyes, I can still hear Pat Benatar singing about love being a battlefield…
posted by Beth on 7-1-2009 at 7:41 pm
Does Sony make these anymore?
I remember seeing a cassette walkman at a store about 5 years ago for $10 and thought “People still buy cassette walkmans?”
Oh the joy of having an “eaten” tape. The only tool I’ve ever found that can fix eaten tapes is my pinky.
posted by holly on 7-1-2009 at 9:17 pm
lol Holly – I remember doing that! Fortunately, when these were popular, my pinkie was significantly smaller than it is now (I caught the end of the trend and always used my dad’s – I jumped on the discman bandwagon)
@Sam – thanks for the description, even if slightly exagerated. I about died laughing.
posted by Hastings on 7-2-2009 at 9:02 am
I remember listening to my NKOTB tapes on my Walkman, but they did keep the Walkman alive when they made the Walkman CD player and MP3 player.
posted by Nicole on 7-2-2009 at 10:09 am
My mom still has hers which is probably darn close to 30, and it still works! I had one, but then my dad got A DISCMAN! I was jealous. It ran on 6 AA batteries, so you KNOW it was awesome! A friend of mine in college refused to make the switch to the disc, and forget about pods! She notoriously made great mix tapes, and whenever I see a cassette, I think of her!
posted by sarahbug on 7-2-2009 at 10:20 am
A friend of mine brought his girlfriend home for Christmas last year. After my friends mother realized she didnt get anything for his girlfriend for Christmas, she raced to the upstairs gift closet to quickly wrap anything she could find. Well, on Christmas day she was a proud new owner of a Walkman that must have been in that closet for years.
posted by Andrew on 7-2-2009 at 1:30 pm
My first “Walkman” was a knockoff pink and black Sanyo I bought in 1983 with money I’d saved from baby sitting. A schoolmate copied the first Duran Duran album, Rio, Private Eyes and H2O albums for me. Good times.
I taped so many songs off the radio with my cousin’s boombox to play on the Sanyo. For years in my mind, Alive & Kicking began with a DJ talking over it. When I finally got the song on mp3, it was weird to listen to it without that DJ at the beginning!
posted by Brooklynperson on 7-2-2009 at 6:43 pm