Mondo Knows Facts
The Walkman put music in people's pockets
Sony's TPS-L2 went on sale in Japan in July 1979 and changed listening The TPS-L2 had two headphone sockets so a pair of friends could listen at once, plus a button for talking over the music. Sony expected to sell a few thousand a month and sold far more. The Walkman line eventually passed 200 million units sold. It sits in Mondo's music collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.
Where this comes from
Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.
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More facts like this
The Minimoog made synthesizers portable enough for bandsThe 1970 model folded a whole modular patch into one wooden caseThe Walkman moved music into the streetSony's 1979 player put a stereo cassette in a pocketDire Straits made one of the first all-digital albumsBrothers in Arms was recorded, mixed and mastered digitally in 1985MP3 shrank music by throwing detail awayFraunhofer's perceptual coder became part of an ISO standard in 1993Pro Tools moved editing from tape to screensDigidesign's software let engineers cut and undo takes without losing themAlan Blumlein patented stereo recording in 1931His patent covered coincident microphone pairs and the mid-side technique
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Tags: walkman, portable, sony
The Walkman put music in people's pockets: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- Sony's TPS-L2 went on sale in Japan in July 1979 and changed listening. The figure is taken from NPR, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a music fact?
- Yes. It sits on the Music shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.