Looking Backward: Happy anniversary, Walkman!
July 2nd, 2009 | Published in Google News
Thirty years ago this week, Sony introduced the first Walkman to consumers in Japan. Released on July 1, 1979, the model TPS-L2 was the first in a long history of portable stereo devices. The shape, size, and data format of portable music players continues to evolve, but for many people my age the Sony Walkman was their first music device.
As a kid growing up in the 80s and 90s, my Sony Walkman cassette player was my most prized possession, and an important part of my identity. My first tapes were Smashing Pumpkins' Siamese Dream and MC Hammer's Please Hammer, Don't Hurt 'Em. While my little iPod shuffle can easily hold dozens of cassettes' worth of songs, it's hard to imagine developing the same degree of affection that I held for my first Walkman.
On this 30th anniversary of it's release, I took a look back using News archive search's Timeline view for the term [walkman], focusing on articles from the United States in the 1980s. These materials were made browsable via our News Archive Partner Program. You can easily click the navigation toolbar to zoom in and out on an article, or fit the entire newspaper page in your browsing window.
Click on each image or link to view an article in its original context:
The Milwaukee Sentinel - Jun 24, 1983
The Spokesman-Review - Aug 15, 1982
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - Jul 16, 1982
The Age - Dec 3, 1981
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - Aug 1, 2004
For folks looking for more information from the early days of the Walkman, I found some the following magazine articles in Google Books, including a review in the September 1981 issue of Popular Science and this ad in the February 1984 issue.