If you show a cassette tape to almost anyone under the age of about 25 and ask them what they think it does, they’ll stare blankly back at you like you’ve just asked them to open a tin of beans with a flip-flop. But with the original Walkman – the Sony TPS-L2 – turning 45 years old today, it’s time to recognize it for what it is: the most iconic gadget of all time. If there’s one thing Gen Z likes it’s overusing the word ‘iconic’, but in this case it’s entirely deserved.
Cassettes had been around since the early 1960s, developed by Philips as a far more convenient alternative to vinyl and reel-to-reel tape, but it wasn’t until Sony launched the TPS-L2 in 1979 that the little plastic rectangles really came into their own. The arrival of the Walkman meant you no longer had to be at home or in the car to listen to music that wasn’t chosen by a radio DJ – now you could do it on the move. And that concept is still something you can see all around you, 45 years on.
Backseat freestyle The Walkman is five years older than I am, but by the time I knew what one was they were everywhere. At home my parents listened to vinyl, but in the car we listened to tapes: Genesis, Gerry Rafferty, Paul Simon’s and other stuff that didn’t begin with ‘G’. As I got older I wanted to listen to my own tapes, though, so my parents bought me a cheap Aiwa portable cassette player.
Sure, it wasn’t a Walkman, but by this point pretty much every other consumer electronics b.