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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."

4 of 89 comments (clear)

  1. Walkman patent case by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    The article doesn't mention the German inventor that Sony settled with a couple of years ago. See http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/06/01/walkman_pa tent_case/

  2. He retired by MightyYar · · Score: 5, Informative

    The man is 80 years old. I think it would be better to say he "retired" rather than he "left". It's not like he quit in disgust or took a better offer somewhere else.

    --
    W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
  3. Re:THe Walkman by Chaffar · · Score: 5, Funny
    I remember my first Walkman, and blasting "Ghost Busters". I thought I was so cool... now I post on Slashdot.
    It's hard to believe one could fall so low just by listening to crappy music on a portable tape player...
  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.