Technology Memory Lane « The Marvellous Mechanical Mouse Organ

Technology Memory Lane

13Nov07

I found a great site the other day and it took me on a real stroll down memory lane. It’s a bit nerdy, and probably appeals to the OCD aspect of my personality¹, but Walkman Central has a list of all the Walkmans that Sony have produced. The two that really struck a synapse in the old long term memory were the WM-102 and the earlier WM-10.

A mate of mine in school had the WM-10 and I loved how small it was. It was the same size as a cassette case but it expanded a little wider when you wanted to actually put a tape into it. The WM-102, which came out a couple of years later, went a bit further. It took the battery out of the body altogether and stuck it in a little box on the bottom. You could either use the slim rechargeable one or a standard AA battery. With the rechargable one the whole package was super small and genuinely the same size as a cassette case.

This picture here² is what you got in the pack. I bought mine in 1987, the year they came out, with the winnings from a lottery scratch card. I can’t remember how much it cost but I seem to remember having to put some money towards the £100³ that I won. Finding this site really brought back some memories of old-school⁴ technology envy.

It also made me remember just how dominant Sony were in the portable music player space at the time. Sure there were other manufacturers like Aiwa and Akai but Sony were top dog. It always amazes me how they completely blew the portable music space when MP3 came along. They seemed to be so busy fighting the change in the way people were listening to music that they didn’t produce a digital music player until very late in the game. Even then they refused to support MP3, presumably because they were afraid of piracy issues, and instead came up with their own “standard” ATRAC.

Friends of mine came back from New York recently where they each bought themselves one of these beauties which I think are fantastic. Just as soon as I can find some spare cash to spend on one of them I will⁵. Still, I have fond memories of my trendy little Walkman from the 1980s for a lot of different reasons and I’m sure Sony do too.

– Fintan

1 – You should see me unstack and restack a dishwasher to get everything in order. I scare myself sometimes.
2 – Shamelessly nicked from a sale on the Austrian EBay site.
3 – A princely sum in 1987, especially when you’re 17.
4 – At school!
5 – God knows when the iPhone will reach Ireland….