Oringinal image by Marcin Wichary on Flickr used under Creative Commons
Hard to believe it, but the Walkman will turn 30 on July 1.
Thanks to the ‘tubes for reminding me of this, specifically to this 13-year-old kid’s review of the Walkman, compiled after using it in lieu of his iPod for a week.
Well worth the read, if only for a laugh, and an interesting study in technology advancement over the years, especially through the eyes of someone who’s never used a cassette tape.
Protip for you kids out there: Tapes have two sides.
I assume most of you had a Walkman or a similar device back in the day. Upon reading that post, I immediately began digging for one of my old Walkmen (or is it Walkmans?), which I know my parents sent me in a dump of old stuff last year. You know, the “here are the boxes of crap you left at our house when you moved out decades ago, but never had the decency to remove yourself” shipment.
Unfortunately, I think I tossed it in the trash, along with a slew of old cassette tapes. I guess that should read “fortunately”, at least if you’re my wife. It’s amazing how much crap I accumulate. Too bad too, since I know that bad boy had stickers all over it; see, I’ve always plastered my stuff with stickers.
Anyway, looking at the Walkman Museum, I found several that I know I had. I must have gone through half a dozen of those over the years.
ZOMG I’m old.
“Tapes have two sides.”
True for audio cassettes, but not generally for VCR tapes. Except for the Phillips/Grundig Video 2000 system my parents invested in in preference to VHS or Betamax….
Funny, I was just thinking about that last night, i.e. cassette tapes, laserdiscs, and records are the only media I could think of with two sides of content. Never heard of that video system, sounds futuristic 🙂 I guess DVDs sometimes have two sides too. I wasn't thinking very hard.