The Giz Wiz 55

Our Friday visit to the Gadget Warehouse dredges up a memory from almost 30 years ago. Sony introduced the first Walkman (also called The Soundabout) on July 1st, 1979. In 20 years it should 186 million units. It was the first time people could enjoy stereo just about anywhere. Along with the Walkman Sony developed much smaller and lightweight personal stereo headphones. Although the original Walkman came with one pair of earphones, it had two earphone jacks, plus an orange "mic" button. At first I thought the Walkman recorded too, but after playing with it realized the mic button let you hear what people were saying without removing your earphones. It was made of metal and had two volume controls, one for each channel. And it wasn't cheap. About $180, and that was when a dollar was actually worth something.