this post was submitted on 01 Apr 2026
89 points (98.9% liked)
Technology
84892 readers
3263 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
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?)