RB

Do you remember your first Walkman? If you grew up after the cassette era, of course, you might have owned a CD-playing Discman instead, or maybe — just maybe — even a Minidisc Walkman. Nowadays you probably have an iPod or iPod-like digital audio player as well as a cellphone equipped to serve the same purpose. But all the ways in which you've ever taken your tunes on the go evolved from a common technological ancestor: Sony's TPS-L2, which debuted on the market 40 years ago this month. First marketed in the United States as the Soundabout and the United Kingdom as the Stowaway, it didn't take long to achieve worldwide success under the Japanese-English brand name that long ago became a byword for the personal stereo.

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Corporate report 2019