These are cool and I showed mine on another thread, I had know idea Sony had a patent on the idea, I hope the guy on Shark Tank knows this. https://patents.google.com/patent/US4232202A/en?oq=US4232202A
Panasonic really liked to patent their ideas. https://patents.google.com/patent/USD265821S/en?oq=USD265821S
Thanks AO, that means a lot, feel free to post anything that might be relevant. For those younger members AO used to head up the Walkman Section going back to the very early 2000's and his knowledge and wisdom pushed me into really getting into and researching this audio equipment. He seemed to know every model made and used to pull out ultra rare beautiful units and share them once in a while. Unfortunately with several server changes over the years, a lot of the very early (and incredibly informative) threads have been lost but there's still a ton of good stuff on the forum reader.
Who wants to see headphones? Koss has and had great models, they even made floor speakers for a while that were cool looking. I used to find the late 70's 4A's all the time but these are something different. https://patents.google.com/patent/USD244300S/en?oq=USD262699S
Trying to find some Hitachi, they had some early heavyweights. https://patents.google.com/patent/USD260988S/en?oq=USD260988S
General Electric Mono Box going back to 1977 https://patents.google.com/patent/USD256013S/en?oq=USD256013S
A General Electric Patent for on-board cord storage. https://patents.google.com/patent/US4101089A/en?q=cassette+player&assignee=General+Electric+Co
There are some so familiar drafts here - Fascinating to see the early stages & many were actually produced & became well loved machines!!
Machaneus's Thread in the Walkman Section does a great job of going into more detail showing the finished models. I can identify some of the models but I'm just a student compared to some of you guys that know a ton of these right off the bat. Maybe in the future we can merge the drawings with production photos or I can always edit the post to include more information. I'm hoping this helps get more information out on these wonderful electronics so they don't meet the recycler, in the early days of the internet, this site and AudioKarma were just about the only places to go for audio related equipment and it was so limited.
There's some interesting nuggets in this book, Japanese Manufacturing Investment In Europe, unfortunately some pages are blacked out. https://books.google.com/books?id=P...eAhUCPa0KHfrOBRUQ6AEIKDAA#v=onepage&q&f=false
Found on the Boombox Creators Website, which seems to currently be down. The Vela Discolite's patented lighted speakers. https://patents.google.com/patent/US4811313A/en?oq=4811313
A cool article from High Fidelity Magazine from 1982, lot's of cool boxes, most are kind of rare but I'm lucky to own at least half of what's shown. The full magazine is July 1982 on the Radio History Museum Site. https://www.americanradiohistory.com/High-Fidelity-Magazine.htm
I forgot the Internet Wayback Machine has a book and magazine section, this is from Smash Hits Magazine from the early 80's. It's in the public domain now so here's some boombox reviews. Check out the other issues, it's pretty funny looking back at the clothes and hair. https://archive.org/search.php?query=portable+audio&and[]=collection:"smash-hits"&sin=TXT
A good search there. The original source was probably here: http://likepunkneverhappened.blogspot.com/ Smash Hits was very much aimed at the "I'm going to marry George Michael" female teen audience Whenever Mr X posts a flyer for a coloured boombox with a cute girl holding it I think it was aimed at the same audience. I don't know how familiar people around the world are with The Pet Shop Boys, but before forming them Neil Tennant was the assistant editor of Smash Hits. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smash_Hits
