Transistor radios.
Just in time for Christmas, the world saw a brand new invention – the portable transistor radio. Patented by Richard Koch of Regency, who then teamed with Texas Instruments for manufacturing, the world now could walk around with their radios to listen anywhere. But the price tag on the first mode, the TR-1, was $49.95 in the 1950’s, more than $400 these days.
1962
Transistorized stereo systems.
That year, inventor Henry Kloss came up with the KLH Model 11, a that was portable record player, amplifier, and speakers that folded up and ran on A/C power so it was fully portable. The technology didn’t hit big or last long, maybe because the name “transistorized stereo system” doesn’t sound very cool!
8-Track tapes.
8-Tracks came just in time for the swinging sixties, the decade of the Summer of Love, the British Invasion, and Woodstock. In 1965, the technology advanced where 8-tracks started being installed in cars. That was a huge advance in music because now you could bring your favorite 8-tracks with you, instead of being at the whim of whatever was playing on the radio.
Portable cassette players and the Walkman.
The portable music revolution we still see today started today in 1978, not with Apple in Palo Alto, California but a world away in Japan. It was there that Akio Morita, the chairman of Sony, sent down orders to create a portable music player for the new audio technology, cassette tapes, so he could finish listening to his operas while in the car. A man named Nobutoshi Kihara, an audio division engineer, scrambled to make it happen, and within months Sony had their first prototype for the Walkman. Others copied and improved it, and early portable cassette players had Hi-Fi stereo sound and even Am/FM radios.
Boom Boxes.
While the Walkman was great for listening to your own music, it's precursor was the boom box, a portable stereo system released by Sony, Panasonic, and many others. It easily incorporated a tape deck, AM/FM radio, decent speakers, operated off of D batteries, and could be carried easily with a family - a true portable music party. Just in time for the coming rap music revolution!
The portable disc player.
Sony struck again in the mid 1980’s when they partnered with Philips to create the D-50, which was commonly called the Discman. Now, we could carry our fancy new CD’s with us and listen via a space-aged laser beam orientation system, though we had to hold them completely still so the CD wouldn’t skip, so the portable CD player wasn’t very practically.
Though the problem was later corrected when Sony and other Discman manufacturers added anti-skip technology that buffered playback for 3, 5, or 10 seconds or longer.
MiniDisc players.
Sony got the bright idea to cut CD’s to roughly half the size and invent a whole new line of hardware to support them, the MD, or MiniDisc. It did well in technology-thirsty Japan, using magneto-optical technology to enhance the CD listening experience in a smaller format. But minidisc players never caught on with the public, who knew CD’s weren’t going away, and something bigger was on the portable music horizon…
MP3 Players.
The huge jump in music technology in the 1990’s was the advent of MP3 files, music tracks stores in a digital file via a compression algorithm. They took up about one-tenth the digital storage size of CD’s, would never skip, and were easy to upload and share. The MPMan was the first commercially available MP3 music player, developed by the Korean company, SaeHan Information Systems and imported to the U.S. by Eiger Labs. It featured a rechargable battery and enough storage for 32 minutes of music.
2001
The Apple iPod Classic.
The world of music changed forever when Steve Jobs and Apple released their MP3 player, the iPod. It combined personal music functionality with a simple and practical aesthetic. Basically, it was the coolest thing we’ve ever seen. Though it had some issues – like holding only 5GB of storage and not being compatible with Windows.
2002
The iPod Classic 2.
Love ‘em or hate ‘em, Apple launches more product updates than any other company. Whether it’s to sell more products (like the iPhone 6) or because they want to share such great innovations, the result in 2002 was a huge upgrade to the only-one-year-old iPod Classic.
2003
iTunes.
While not a portable music player, it was the “home base” platform for music lovers that made the iPod even more universal. Apple even released a Windows-friendly version soon after.
The iPod mini.
The mini was never a big hit but it was the start of something big – when portable digital music players got smaller, held more music, and had better batteries. The mini may have been the first iPod custom made for people working out or on the go, but it’s small 4GB storage size made it ripe for upgrades.
The iPod Nano.
Apple got it right with the Nano, which was smaller and better, came in fun colors, and easier than ever to enjoy for working out and daily use. The generations of Nano later introduced portable mini video to our iPods.
2007
Smartphones.
The first iPhone was released on June 29, 2007, combining the a iPod with a cell phone. Though it had a short battery life, wasn’t compatible with all headphones, crashed a lot, and was too expensive, its popularity in the US and abroad exploded. Since then we’ve had many updates and evolutions or improvement, and others like Samsung keeping pace with their own great smartphones.
Smart watches and other devices.
The immediate future holds portable music players embedded in our watches, eyeglasses and even in our shoes, all synched together with Bluetooth technology. None of them have really captured our imaginations like the first Walkman or the iPod, but if there’s one thing we knew, it’s that the next amazing music player revolution is right around the corner.
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