13-year-old trades iPod for Walkman, reports on mysterious ancient artifact
By Joshua Topolsky 
posted June 29th 2009 9:24AM
posted June 29th 2009 9:24AM
- When I wore it walking down the street or going into shops, I got strange looks, a mixture of surprise and curiosity, that made me a little embarrassed.
- It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape. That was not the only naive mistake that I made; I mistook the metal/normal switch on the Walkman for a genre-specific equaliser, but later I discovered that it was in fact used to switch between two different types of cassette.
- I managed to create an impromptu shuffle feature simply by holding down "rewind" and releasing it randomly - effective, if a little laboured.
- When playing, it is clearly evident that the music sounds significantly different than when played on an MP3 player, mainly because of the hissy backtrack and odd warbly noises on the Walkman.
[Via Richard Lai]
I remember my walkman-like(not an actual one) getup in '87, listening to Def Leppard's Hysteria on it. The ff & rewind buttons were placed above the cassette spindle wheels on the door, which I thought was slick. I remember feeling inferior because my cassette recorder in '82 didn't have a counter, making TI-99/4A cassette program storage retrieval difficult.
His Dad could have at least given him one of the last super slim Walkmans with auto reverse, dolby and digital tuner.
I'm only 18 and even I know that a tape has 2 sides.
yeah, but that kid is only 13, not 18. I'll bet youngsters these days don't know how many audio sides an LP has (hint, not the same as a CD ). Oh wait, he won't know what an LP is either.
A "real" walkman was always beyond my budget.
To this day songs like "Blinded Me With Science" and "Electric Avenue" will always bring back memories of my generic AM/FM knockoff with it's orange earphone pads.
They were pretty good times, considering I was also listening to them on a particular hottie's couch at the time waiting for her to get ready.
She got ready.
Good times.
I bet you tell that story to your child on their birthday every year
"...and this, my child, is the cheap AM/FM Walkman ripoff with the orange earpads that started all the trouble!"
Wonder if the kid will let me borrow that so I can listen to my old Duran Duran tapes......
i would totally rock that walkman.. that's badass! i had one of the yellow "sports" ones that my brother gave me.. i remember those days.. i also had one of the first sony cd walkmans... like no skip protection at all ahhahaha
I had four Walkmans over the years; two of them were actual Sonys and the first was the yellow Sports Walkman... which I lost in a college library about four years later. :-(
And I still remember the Discman I got for my 16th birthday - no skip protection, of course, but I was the happiest guy in the New York suburbs that day. ;-) Most of the time it stayed home, plugged into the family stereo system; didn't need to get a home CD player for years.
Ahahaha... Amazing.
Also, that Walkman is pretty sexy.
For those who claim people this young couldn't speak or write like this, what about Christopher Paolini, the author of Eragon? He was 15 years old when he finished his first draft. My daughter is 12 and she writes better than most authors. It's not an exaggeration it's simply the truth. Neither Christopher Paolini nor my daughter are products of the public school system, but are homeschooled.
To clarify, I am not saying people in the current public school system (in America at least), couldn't write like this, but the percentages of those who can in the homeschool community is greater than those in the public schools. And yes, my daughter is very social and is not limited to interacting with only children her age.
Wow as simple as walkmans are haha
I switched from cds to mp3 like 4-5 years ago
It was pretty fulfilling when youd get a good mixtape in there though. When you made a list of great songs and actually got them all sounding right....... If you had some of those decks you could do small fades in and out.......... Good playlists arent as fulfilling....... I have a workout playlist that I think Ill never repeat once since it has a ridiculous amount of music on it......
It is scary that kids don't know what cassettes are. But my 5 year old doesn't even know what CDs are, let alone tapes. She assumes its a DVD. She has no comprehension that music comes out of it.
This is freaking hilarious. In 20 years, when some guy gives his son a desktop or a game console, we'll find an equivalent article on Engadget 2.0.
Not to show my age or anything - but I always though Tape 'Singles' were awesome. I had Ice Cube's "It Was A Good Day" on tape single. Same song, both sides FTW!
Weren't they marketed as 'cassingles'? Maybe a location thing, dunno'. Now there's a To-Do List project. Convert all cassingles into digital format. And I'm pretty sure that at least one that I have has an exclusive Queensryche track that was never released in any other format.
:scurries off to find boxes:
Saved my money for two months when I was 13 to buy one of these.
I think it is a little unfair that they compare the latest ipod to one of the earliest walkmans. My last walkman was only slightly bigger than a tape and was a very nice fingerprint attracting chrome just like the ipods. It also had something like a 20-30 hour battery life, an inline remote control and touch sensitive buttons. The sound quality on it was also pretty good for a tape player and you could fast forward to the start of the next track automatically. The first MP3 players had rubbish sound, were bulky, ugly and had very poor battery life.....
I had the original model, as pictured, but branded the Sony "Soundabout" before it was the Walkman. Dual headphone jacks, and the big orange button on top was the Hotline button. Pushing it significantly lowered the headphone volume and activated an external mic so you could speak to someone and hear them over the music. An innovative feature that was, oddly enough, left out of every other PAP ever since.
The original 1979 Walkman was, I believe, called the Stowaway in the UK and Europe, and the Soundabout in North America (recalling what Akio Morita said in his book "Made in Japan").
Glad so many people remembered the old hotline button, too - because it was used as a point of humor in the movie "48 Hours." Remember when Nick Nolte meets Eddie Murphy for the first time, and Eddie is totally engrossed in "Roxanne" and singing along - and Nick has to press the button and scream into the mike to get his attention? ;-) I do wonder if any kids who would see the scene now would totally get it...
Not the same experience without the nerfball headphones, connected by razor thin piece of metal that breaks at the least amount of pressure.
great read, but he must have had help writing that...
Be fIair this kid from Aberdeenshire he probably has never seen planes or cars either.
that kids mom must have married one ugly mofo. he certainly didnt get his genes from her....
I had that same model shown in the source article (not the one pictured here). I'd usually have one mixed tape in the machine, and an extra thrown into my knapsack. Once I was sick of the songs (or just the song order), it was back to the record player with my albums, 45s, and Maxell tapes.
I remember those walks to and from school very fondly, and the act of creating the tapes resulted in a much more personal experience than I get today from dragging and dropping (partly due to having to actually listen to the music while recording it). And since prerecorded tapes sounded like shit, recording records onto chrome tapes was the only way to do it. Even after CDs arrived, I continued to purchase vinyl because it cost half as much. Remember when we were all told that CD prices would drop once the format took off?
Now my record collection just sits there and taunts me with a massive conversion project that likely will never get done. Not all my albums, just the rare and local stuff that isn't available anymore. Doesn't help that the turntable belt is all dry and crispy now, either... ^-^
Yes! I used to buy Maxell Chrome tapes in boxes of 10, in pursuit of constructing the perfect mixed tape from my LPs. I even used to record my newly purchased LPs to tape, and that way the LP would be stored, only having been played once. Now that valuable box of records is sitting forlornly in my garage. slowly warping.
I certainly don't miss the days of warble, hiss & miswound tapes, let alone constructing playlists in real-time.
I though this was the best quote from the article: "I'm relieved that the majority of technological advancement happened before I was born...". I can't wait until this kid is 40 and re-reading this article thru his new iEye neuro-transmitting occular device.
"I'm relieved that the majority of technological advancement happened before I was born, as I can't imagine having to use such basic equipment every day"
I think this is quite a wonderful statement. Cause I bet no mater when we were [are] born (60's 90's or [in the future] ), that's exactly how we all thought [will think], when we turned [turn] "13" :)
That was an awsome story! I still have my Walkman and it still works! It is the original cassette Walkman released around 1981. I even have the optional external 2D-cell battery pack. Too bad I still don't have the original headphones.
This brought back memories of those good old days.
we use to buy Walkmans from Radio shack, they ones with the three band EQ, bust them open and adjust the volume setting that was on the circuit board. at 50 bucks a pop they were a steal.
I'm less concerned with the fact that I used to own a walkman then I am with the fact that a 13 year old is more articulate then me, a 22 year old college graduate.
"When playing, it is clearly evident that the music sounds significantly different than when played on an MP3 player, mainly because of the hissy backtrack and odd warbly noises on the Walkman"
Is it REALLY clearly evident? The vast majority of MP3s have hissy overtones when high frequencies (eg. cymbals) are reproduced, which is why I don't purchase tunes online unless I can aquire uncompressed or lossless forms.
You could just hide your ipod in your walkman:
http://dvice.com/pics/ipod_walkman_disguise.jpg
in fact, I think this is brilliant
Wow... so many of you are ignorant to think that a child at the age of 13 is unable to have better linguistics ability then you ever will. Its quiet sad and pathetic how dumb most of you are.
It's quiet, sad and pathetic? Are you sure you don't want to try and undo this before posting it to the internet, where it will remain forever as a tribute to your glorious linguisticism?
If you change your mind, hit control-Z over and over and over until we forget how funny you are. It's not too late!
Yeah, i'd like to see how much they edited his actual words to sound professional.
Cool piece!
I've had similar explorations into past tech, mostly on whim and usually with larger things such as boats, old cars or old airplanes. With any big machine, a bit of pushing/prodding and following where lines go leads you to figure out the function. Though missing a shift on a Model T could lead to a crash, where as FFWD on a Walkman might just chew a tape.
I wonder what kids in the future will think of iPods? Will future cloud-sourced OSs make our current OS-per-device paradigm seem hopelessly quaint and confusing?
I noted that he liked the "satisfying clunk" of button engaging. All of us who are designers ought to take note - a good old fashioned button-push is hard to beat.
I'm about eight years older than this boy and he doesn't know how those sweet retro things work? Man I guess times change way to fast now.
I remembered recording songs on the radio all night long with my cassette radio. Ah, those were the days...
Is it just me or does that walkman at the top of the page contain more design flair and looks much better than the ipod. I'm loving it.
even the bundled headphones were worse. thats saying a lot
Never was a Sony guy myself. I went for the Aiwa with the sweet digital display on front.
I went through a number of these as a kid. I listened to them constantly. Riding the bus to and from school, in the halls, during class when the teachers would let me. I wore one out every 2 years or so and always carried several pairs of rechargeable, high tech NiCD AA batteries, which I charged every night (and also wore out every couple of years). If I recall correctly they were about $40 a pop and took a couple month's worth of summer lawn mowing money to afford.
The last one I bought - and still have in a closet somewhere - was the shit. It had full electronic transport controls, meaning no more big buttons. A little wired remote, attached to the headphones and hanging around your neck, controlled all tape & radio functions. You could even flip tape sides just by pressing a button, it would drop the head down to the opposite track and reverse rotation. It was quite a bit smaller, too, not much bigger than the cassette tape it held and had a nice leather case you could just leave it in all the time since you had all functions and buttons accessible on the remote. That was a bad ass player. Cost me over $150 - a lot of money when you're in middle school in the eighties.
One thought on what a 'child' is familiar with, at least technologically speaking, would be that the more one's parent is a pack rat, the more familiar one would be with earlier technology. That being said, and coming from a long line of pack rats, I remember my earliest experiences with audio being with cassettes. Later on, I was allowed to use my dad's top of the line (when it came out) record player, or listen to my mom's 45s. Somewhere I've still got a 'long box' package for an early CD, even.
And after all that, I can count on one hand the number of 8-track players (working or not) that I've ever seen. Same thing with a Betamax player. Just one.
There was a point here. Other than, damn that story made me feel old.
where do you even get tapes in this day and age?
That article is some funny stuff. Amazing the things that exist now compared to what we used back in the day! Either way though, I sure did love my Walkman!
http://www.wiredortired.com/wts/413-walkman-vs-ipod-funny-to-think-what-we-used-to-use
I don't think this is real, the dialogue seems too much like it was meant to be a joke...
I've never used an 8 track player but if I got the chance I sure as hell don't expect it to have the same functions as any modern cd/mp3 player...the son of a journalist should know that a little research goes a long way..
But if it is true, serious props to the British school system.
I think we get a little carried away with the "oh, when I was young" stuff. Come on, please don't pretend a tape player is that alien of a device yet. My car, from the year 2000 has a tape player in it. Sure, it was old even back then. But there it is.
There are many cars on the road today with tape players, and many stereo systems still being sold with tape players. In fact, vinyl record players are even older, yet they are still in the public consciousness, and it will be a sad day when they are not, as this would mean an ignorance of our very history.
Please, let us not be so ridiculous and eager to look strangely upon a history which has barely passed.
I still keep a walkman to load sound data into my vintage synth. No digital inputs, just IN and OUT tape jacks.
Yup, the days of storing digital info on magnetic tape haven't quite gone away.