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Walkman Creator Leaves Sony

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the walking-shoes dept.

Gammu writes "Nobutoshi Kihara, the engineer behind the Walkman, has left Sony. In the late seventies, one of the co-chairman of Sony, Morita, requested the audio division create a portable tape player capable of playing his operas while he was on transpacific flights to the US. After less than a year, the Walkman was released to the public and revolutionized the music industry. Read about the development of the first Walkman at Low End Mac."

5 of 89 comments (clear)

  1. Original Walkman by in2mind · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Do any of you still have the original 1979 Walkman in working condition now?

    --
    Wincopy
  2. Re:THe Walkman by joe+155 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The Walkman helped define a generation

    Indeed it did, in the same way the iPod has done now. There is a lesson to Apple here about not taking customers and market share for granted.

    --
    *''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
  3. kihara was not the inventor of the walkman... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Kihara could be very well the creator if the *Sony* walkman, but let's not forget who invented it : Andreas Pavel, who won a 20 year-long battle on the subject.
    Article here : http://itvibe.com/news/2587/

  4. Behind the lightweight headphones by rkodama · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It's worth noting that the Walkman's lightweight headphones were made possible by the discovery and development of samarium cobalt (SmCo) permanent magnets in the early 1970's. Materials (e.g. AlNiCo) that existed before that were not only much weaker, but could only be made in elongated shapes, resulting in much bulkier voice coil assemblies.

  5. More History, for those interested. by JimB · · Score: 2, Interesting

    http://www.sony.net/Fun/SH/index.html

    Is, of course, produced by SONY, so it has a slant, but there are TONS of stories about this company and its products. Quite a few of them seem to be written WITH the folks who actually worked on whatever product they are describing. Very interesting.

    Oh, Cowboyneal: A few more 'headlines' like that, and we will start believing you went to the Dan Rather School of Journalism.