I still recall saving enough money from my paper route to save enough money to buy a cassette recorder from Radio Shack to listen to music on. It was about the length of a shoe box and about half the height of it. There was only a single speaker so no stereo music but it did the job. I would carry it in my paper bag to listen to music while walking. Prior to that I had an old boombox, the size of a small suitcase, that could play 8-track tapes; I don't recall it being able to run on batteries, wall outlet only. If I am remembering correctly the first 8-track tape I bought on my own was Blondie. I also had a burgeoning record collection going on with my favorite being Simon & Garfunkel's Bridge Over Troubled Waters on vinyl. But the portable cassette recorder? That was cutting edge of technology!
It wouldn't be a for another few summers before the original Sony Walkman came out. After that it seemed that floodgates were quickly opened in the years that followed as the CD was introduced which led to a CD Walkman, Sony's MiniDisc Walkman, and a slew of proprietary digital formats & alternative storage methods. I can't recall how many different portable music players I went through during those years versus my first "real" home stereo system, a Fisher Stereo system that included a tray CD player. Somewhere along the way I even had a portable CD player that could play back MP3 files that were burned to a data CD -- talk about hi-tech!
With that it mind, watching a kids reaction to a set of the Sony headphones as "Oh, my Grampa has these!" both amuses and depresses me at the same time.
It wouldn't be a for another few summers before the original Sony Walkman came out. After that it seemed that floodgates were quickly opened in the years that followed as the CD was introduced which led to a CD Walkman, Sony's MiniDisc Walkman, and a slew of proprietary digital formats & alternative storage methods. I can't recall how many different portable music players I went through during those years versus my first "real" home stereo system, a Fisher Stereo system that included a tray CD player. Somewhere along the way I even had a portable CD player that could play back MP3 files that were burned to a data CD -- talk about hi-tech!
With that it mind, watching a kids reaction to a set of the Sony headphones as "Oh, my Grampa has these!" both amuses and depresses me at the same time.
