The Walkman came out in 79 and was cheap enough for a present to a teen or young adult by 82, at the latest. Hell, if you wanted to raid your parents’ stuff, they may well have had a (mono) folio style cassette recorder or even a Sony TC-50 cassette recorder/player (which looks exactly* like a Walkman), made as early as 1968! They brought them to the Moon during the Apollo program. That’s right, cassettes technically came BEFORE 8-Tracks.
But they were too expensive until the late 70s, and by then most people already had an 8-track collection, so it took a few more years to mass adopt.
Source: I have mono demo tapes that my dad recorded from his poor Oklahoma farm town in 1970
My point wasn’t really about the price, but availability. You said you remembered Walkman as “way way later than the 70s” and I was just pointing out that, technically, they were kind of around the WHOLE 70s, just not priced or marketed in a way that they would have been very common, and hence why you remember them “way way later” (probably sometime around 82-84, right?)
OK for me the 80’s are way later, because the two were a threshold between two eras.
So to me 78 is way way later than 82. In the sense that that was the time things began to turn to shit politically.
We actually had a very popular song here in Denmark, about how buying a walk man made things sound like new your man.
Back then USA was kind of both cool but also something that we shouldn’t strive to copy.
The problem is that I had zero interest in anything like a walk man.
My interest was in big high power HiFi.
The Walkman came out in 79 and was cheap enough for a present to a teen or young adult by 82, at the latest. Hell, if you wanted to raid your parents’ stuff, they may well have had a (mono) folio style cassette recorder or even a Sony TC-50 cassette recorder/player (which looks exactly* like a Walkman), made as early as 1968! They brought them to the Moon during the Apollo program. That’s right, cassettes technically came BEFORE 8-Tracks.
But they were too expensive until the late 70s, and by then most people already had an 8-track collection, so it took a few more years to mass adopt.
Source: I have mono demo tapes that my dad recorded from his poor Oklahoma farm town in 1970
Oh the issue about the Walkman had nothing to do with price, I just didn’t like the format.
My point wasn’t really about the price, but availability. You said you remembered Walkman as “way way later than the 70s” and I was just pointing out that, technically, they were kind of around the WHOLE 70s, just not priced or marketed in a way that they would have been very common, and hence why you remember them “way way later” (probably sometime around 82-84, right?)
OK for me the 80’s are way later, because the two were a threshold between two eras.
So to me 78 is way way later than 82. In the sense that that was the time things began to turn to shit politically.
We actually had a very popular song here in Denmark, about how buying a walk man made things sound like new your man.
Back then USA was kind of both cool but also something that we shouldn’t strive to copy.
The problem is that I had zero interest in anything like a walk man.
My interest was in big high power HiFi.