In early 1979, Sony chairman Akio Morita summoned apprehensive young, engineers, planners and publicity people to a meeting to show off a promising prototype, a modified version of a compact cassette recorder used by journalists known as the Sony Pressman.
“This is the product that will satisfy those young people who want to listen to music all day,” Morita told the group. “They’ll take it everywhere with them, and…if we put a playback-only headphone stereo like this on the market, it’ll be a hit.”
On July 1, 1979, Sony launched the blue and silver Walkman TPS-L2 in Japan and sold it for around ¥33,000, roughly $150 at the time in U.S. dollars. A year later, it came to the U.S.
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Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
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