Released July 1979. Portable cassette player invented by Nobutoshi Kihara. Runs on batteries.
Kihara studied at Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan. He was involved in miniaturization, a field that would make Japan the leading electronics maker in the future..
It was the age where portability was in demand in the bustling city life, no one was bothering to carry a boombox around, and miniaturization fit very well into solving that.
Elsewhere in the world there were bigger and bulkier ways to playing cassettes such as VCRs, but they had to be plugged in and stationed in one place.
In this sense the Walkman was better because it was portable. That was its main selling point. It appealed to everyone who travelled often such as workers and students, who commute every day.
The Walkman was advertised very well in America, in fact it went very viral very fast there. It was all about innovation.
The 1970s lifestyle was the disco lifestyle, it was all about having fun, and music everywhere you go helped achieve the idea of enjoying every moment in your life.
The design of the Walkman was influential to future ideas and concepts of making information such as images, videos, and documents, portable and easy to keep on your person. They even produced a portable CD player not too long after the CD player station was released. In 2007 they engineered their first phone which was able to playback audio and video on their phones as well as take and make calls.
sources:
http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1907884,00.html
http://www.theverge.com/2014/7/1/5861062/sony-walkman-at-35
https://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/CorporateInfo/History/sonyhistory-e.html
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