[rapjr9]

Stereo HiFi personal music was a new thing though. Transistor radios were mono and were listened to through a low fidelity crystal earphone in one ear. The time was ripe for mobile personal cassette players though, business had been using small portable cassette recorder/players for a while to dictate notes while away from the office. They became very cheap; I bought one in college and connected it to the Sennheiser headphones I used with my stereo using a hacked adapter from Radio Shack. It was mono but I had mobile cassette music perhaps a year before the Walkman came out. It was kind of surreal to have my own personal music while walking, where I could listen to lots of stuff that would never get radio play. For example, listening to King Crimson while walking through a department store. It made the world seem different, I had more control over the environment, I didn't have to listen to the Musak or hear people talking. People would stop me and ask about the system and go off and build their own. There were probably quite a few people who invented their own before Sony released the Walkman.