The first cassette player, and My first cassette player

This is the world's first laptop, designed by Bill Moggridge:

(the GRiD Compass, designed in 1979, though it didn't appear until 1982)

This is the world's first walkman, credited to engineer Nobutoshi Kihara under the direction of Sony boss Akio Morita:

(July 1979)

Apparently Sony just announced that they will stop producing the walkman.

There is an article here at Design Observer called "Keith Richards and His Amazing Portable Cassette Recorder":

“I’ve learned everything I know off of records,” says the guitarist-turned-historian of technological innovation.
What is important, Richards declares, is “being able to replay something immediately without all that terrible stricture of written music, the prison of those bars, those five lines. Before 1900, you’ve got Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Chopin, the cancan. With recording, it was emancipation for the people. “It surely can’t be any coincidence that jazz and the blues started to take over the world the minute recording started, within a few years, just like that.”

Never thought about it like that!

This is the model of portable casette player I had as a kid. Though I was more into the story telling than the Stones.

Hello, old friend.

oh, and this:

hair ball pin etc.

This hilarious piece of jewelry reminded me how I wanted my friend Tom, at Ultimate Shirt Co., to print a t-shirt that alread had sweat stains on it! Nice, big ones. He wasn't a big fan of the idea... I don't know if it would be such a big seller. I think it could be good, maybe if you use bright colorful colors. It would be funny.
Which reminds me, growing up in Austria, we never had hypercolor t-shirts, but I always wondered if you wouldn't just have hypercolored pits the whole time?? This great picture I found was just too good to be true....it's american apparel.