Sony WM-2 (Feb. 1981) was the first personal stereo tape player that was designed on a clean sheet of paper as a walkman, or was it ? In 1978 at a time when the word walkman didn't meant anything in a way it does today , a year before Sony presented the first walkman the TPS-L2 (July 1979) , there was an exhibition / contest (?) where the visitors could see this : The resemblance with WM-2 is striking , it has a speaker and recording function , it is a dictation machine ! At the familiar side , the control buttons are positioned in a way so only one hand can be used , the cassette is loaded at the door where the tape head mechanism is attached. Who would have imagined that after Sony's first walkman that was based on a dictation machine also the first purpose designed walkman would have been based on the overall layout of a dictation tape recorder prototype ! ORIGINAL ARTICLE : TRANSLATION : The WM-2 was released in its original design. February 1, 1981 ¥32,000 I think there are many people who remember the unique styling away from the typical tape recorder It can be said that the status of the New Concept product called “Walkman” has been established. By the way, this model does not mean that the switch was located on the front when the Walkman was made smaller and lighter. One year before the release of TPS-L2, at an external design competition a memo device presented. The designer will design based on the rough position of the switches. However, in the case of WM-2, there was a design first. The engineer directly fulfilled the request to "create a Walkman in this box with such a layout of operation buttons". Aside from the background, WM-2 is better than TPS-L2 We realized 110g weight reduction and 280g. It was condensed to a size close to the image of exactly two AA batteries and a cassette tape. Dry batteries and motors have been skillfully laid out so that they are placed within the thinnest part of the cassette. Prior to entering the market, we made a vivid debut and achieved sales of 2.5 million units. The best-selling Walkman, and no single model that surpasses this record has yet appeared. High-quality Walkman DD WM-DD Sale date October 21, 1982 ¥29,000 With the dawn of the full-scale Walkman era in 1981, other manufacturers have entered one after another from around summer. Originally, the point where the recording function was abandoned was the origin of the Walkman idea, but it was a break through when belt drive was changed to a method (disc drive) in which the rotation of the motor is transmitted to the flywheel as it is by frictional force. In addition to this, the work of Sony's design room, which was exhibited in Hula's greatest hit work WM-2, became the prototype. [Ed. note : From the translation is not clear if Hula is a designer name or a place name but the overall meaning of the sentence should be that the dictation prototype was the basis for WM2] It is easy to operate it with one hand. It was proposed as a memo device, and had a record button and a speaker. Since it was an exhibition work for a design contest, it did not have any mechanical technical support. However, a mechanism where the head is located behind the cassette lid and the tape and head adhere to each other when the cassette is inserted has already been proposed at this time. (From here on the original text continues with an interesting description about the DD evolution but it is a bit off topic and needs more cleanup). The translations are largely unedited , however , I think more or less key information and meanings are comprehensible. It makes me wonder what ever happened to these prototypes ? Do they exist today ? This particular one seems to be a non working mock up , is it in Sony's possession , forgotten somewhere in a drawer at designer's home or worst , thrown away from someone unaware during a clean up ?
It was such a nice-looking player and it was so small. I was still using a large piano key mono player dreaming about the near future when I could buy one of these. They were so advanced and part of a school kids gadget bag of tape player, computer and calculator, some guys also had the cool Swatch or Casio to round it out. Design guys love this stuff, just look at Adam Savage's Videos, he has stuff everywhere including some of the movie props he's made. One of the articles I posted talked about one of the guys having a huge room of early models, I think it was in California. This equipment was also made when we were still doing manual drafting, there's original drawings out there somewhere and they would be really cool to find.
More translations revealed what was actually the thinking behind the project and how it became the basis for WM-2 by the designer himself ! PROTOTYPE DESIGNER (in 1989) : "It looks like WM-2, but it was more like a design exercise than it was purpose designed at that time. [Ed.note : 1978] Actually, I thought that it would be possible to make a memo coder that embodies everything in a single printed circuit board, I designed the idea and made a mock up and then showed it to the chairman who happened to come to the design room, It was nominated as the design for the successor of the Walkman . It wasn't just the matter of stereo conversion, people in charge of design and manufacturing should also have had no difficulty." Designer's name and a photo (!) hopefully in the near future , I need to cross check the information from an alternative source.
Thank you Hugo , it's a pleasure to share with our community this information when available ! Only recently I found about that prototype and was surprised too , it was in random info material sent to me by a friend . Soon I may have more on the subject .
