Today in History, July 1: The First Walkman Goes On Sale

byericpierre

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Updated 7 years ago

1979, on July 1, the first Walkman, a device as astonishing on first encounter as the cellular phone would later be, goes on sale for the very first time.

Walkman is a Sony brand tradename, originally used for portable audio cassette players. In later years, it has been used by Sony to market digital portable audio/video players, as well as a line of mobile phones introduced in 2005.

The original Walkman cassette player, released in 1979, changed music listening habits by allowing people to listen to their music whilst on the move.

The Sony Walkman didn’t represent a breakthrough in technology, as every element of the Walkman was already in production or testing as part of some other device when Sony’s legendary chairman, Masaru Ibuka, made a special request in early 1979. Ibuka was a classic music lover who traveled frequently, and he was already in the habit of carrying one of his company’s “portable” stereo tape recorders with him on international flights.

But the Sony TC-D5 was a notebook-sized, five pound heavy device that was in no way portable by modern standards, and far too expensive to ever sell successfully. Sony thus began work on a portable player that could combine light weight and stereo sound with a price an ordinary consumer could afford.

The original prototype was built from a heavily modified Sony Pressman, a lightweight, compact tape recorder designed for journalists. By replacing the recording head with a playback head, and the speaker with an amplifier, Sony engineers could combine the portability of the Pressman with the stereo experience of the TC-D5. By using lower-end components to reduce the price, and enclosing the parts in an attractive casing, they had solved Ibuka's challenge.

Even though this proto-Walkman required large, earmuff-like headphones and custom-made batteries (which, of course, ran out on Ibuka midway through his flight), it impressed the Sony chairman tremendously with its sound quality and portability. Many objections were raised internally when Ibuka began his push to create a marketable version of the device, the biggest of which was conceptual: Would anyone actually buy a cassette device that was not for recording but only for playback? Ibuka’s simple response: ”Don’t you think a stereo cassette player that you can listen to while walking around is a good idea?” proved to be one of the great understatements in business history.

After a breakneck development phase of only four months, Sony engineers had a reliable product ready for market at 30,000 Yen (approximately US$150 in 1979) and available before the start of summer vacation for Japanese students. Both critical targets established at the outset of development. The initial production run of 30,000 units looked to be too ambitious. After the first month of sales only 3,000 units had been sold. But after an innovative consumer-marketing campaign in which Sony representatives simply approached pedestrians on the streets of Tokyo and gave them a chance to listen to the Walkman, the product took off, selling out available stocks before the end of August and signaling the beginning of one of Sony’s greatest success stories.

The Brazilian-German inventor Andreas Pavel had the idea for a portable stereo already a few years earlier. He patented his invention, the Stereobelt, in 1977. Though nobody knew about his invention. Therefore, it was reinvented by Sony. Sony agreed to pay Pavel royalties, it refused to recognize him as the inventor of the portable stereo player until a legal settlement in 2003.

As it turned out, Sony was not the first inventor of a portable stereo cassette player. The Brazilian-German inventor Andreas Pavel had the idea for a portable stereo already a few years earlier. In 1977, he wrote the blueprint for his personal audio system, "The Coming Audio Revolution", and designed a modular version of it, the stereobelt, which today is part of the collection of the Museum for Italian Design, at the Trienale di Milano.

Over the next few years Pavel tried to interest companies like Yamaha, B&O, and others in manufacturing his personal hifi-system. In March 1977, Pavel filed his priority patent application on the device in Italy followed by patents in the United States, Germany, United Kingdom, and Japan.

In 1979, Sony began selling the popular Walkman, and in 1980 started legal talks with Pavel regarding a possible agreement on royalty fees. In 1986 Sony finally agreed to pay royalties to Pavel, after it lost opposition to Pavel's German patent, but only for sales of some models in Germany and the UK.

In 1989, Pavel started infringement proceedings against Sony in the UK. Four years later, the British patent was invalidated by a British judge on the request of Sony's lawyers.

In 1999, Pavel threatened Sony with further legal suits in every country in which he had patented his invention. The corporation agreed to resume talks with Pavel and a settlement was finally reached in 2003. The agreement led Pavel switch off www.sonyeposed.com, a website that he had created to report on the litigation.

The exact settlement fee is a closely guarded secret. It is said that Pavel received a cash settlement for damages and is now also receiving royalties on some Walkman sales. The settlement also includes a clause which will prevent Pavel from bringing future lawsuits based on the same set of patents and patent applications. The settlement grants Pavel the recognition from Sony that he was the original inventor of the personal stereo player, as exemplified by and introduced with Sony's Walkman.