The concept of "personal music" has been driven by three great devices (so far). The first and most important was of course the transistor radio, which appeared in 1954 in the US and 1955 in Japan. The next device was the Sony Walkman, which appeared in 1979. And the third device is Apple's iPod.

But let's get back to the Sony Walkman. Pictured in the middle below is the TPS-L2, the very first Walkman. So early is this example that it is not even labeled "Walkman," as is the slightly later model TPS-L2 you see to the right. At left is the pre-Walkman TCM-600 introduced in 1978 as the world's smallest tape recorder for standard cassettes. It is a mono recorder/player where the Walkman is a stereo play-only device. In researching the Walkman I saw several references to the Walkman's design and name being based on the Sony Pressman. I could find nothing to verify that the TCM-600 shown here is the first Pressman, but it might well be. It doesn't say so on it. But then the first Walkman doesn't say "Walkman" on it either!