My First Sony Series Walkman, 1987.
Image courtesy of Rizzoli.There are certain products that can conjure an entire era with a single mention. Case in point: the Sony Walkman. The iconic portable audio player, which turns 36 this year, is just one of 89 game-changing gadgets featured in the new book Sony Design: Making Modern (Rizzoli, 2015). Two hundred and seventy-nine pages document the electronic brand’s history, from its origins in postwar Japan with the TR-63, the world’s first pocket-sized transistor radio, through Y2K-era robots and the Playstation gaming system to today’s paper-thin touchscreens. Expert essays and lavishly photographed products do more than tell the story of a company—they chart how the ways we consume media have changed over the past half century.
