Baby Boomers owe much to the Japanese electrical manufacturing giant Sony, for they have been responsible for many electronic innovations over the years, not the least being bringing portability to high fidelity stereo sound through the development of their then-innovate personal stereo cassette player, The Walkman. Like the iPod of today, the Walkman reached pop icon status in the early 1980s, and became a symbol of youth, individuality and freedom. 

The Walkman concept was birthed in 1978 when Kozo Ohsone, general manager of Sony's Tape Recorder Business Division, begin work on a stereo version of the Pressman, a small, monaural tape recorder that Sony had launched in 1977. Of its prototype, Sony Founder Akio Morita said in February 1979, "This is the product that will satisfy those young people who want to listen to music all day. They'll take it everywhere with them, and they won't care about record functions. If we put a playback-only headphone stereo like this on the market, it'll be a hit."

Sony invented the compact and extremely lightweight H-AIR MDR3 headphones for their new cassette player. At that time, headphones weighed on average between 300 to 400 grams, the H-AIR headphones weighed just 50 grams with comparable sound quality.

The name Walkman was a natural progression from Pressman. On 22nd June 1979, the Sony Walkman was launched in Tokyo. Journalists were treated to an unusal press conference. The first Walkmans had two headphone sockets so friends could share the music, but later they got rid of the extra socket, but it was still a significant leap from the old AM transistor radio with the 'hearing aid' ear-piece. By 1995, total production of Walkman units reached 150 million and over 300 different Walkman models have been produced to date.

The Walkman's release was timed perfectly. With the popularity of jogging on the rise, providing hi fi quality portable audio was just what joggers wanted. The Walkman was revolutionary, allowing people to live their lives to a rock soundtrack - fitness freaks could listen to Sheena Easton while jogging, while the rest of us could do the same while taking the morning train. Two things impressed people; How small the tape deck was and how good the sound quality was. Walkmans with radio tuners followed and later came sport and waterproof versions. Half tool, half fashion accessory, the Walkman was an instant hit. in much the same way that the iPod is today.

The portable cassette tape player virtually changed the listening habits of a generation and was single-handedly responsible for the tremendous boom in cassettes sales during the early half of the the 1980s. Other manufacturers followed with their portable cassette players, but the Walkman had made such an impact on the marketplace on its release, the name "Walkman" became synonymous with any headphone radio or cassette player.