Walkman, stylised as WALKMAN (ウォークマン), is a brand of portable audio players manufactured and marketed by Japanese technology company Sony since 1979. The original Walkman was a portable cassette player and its popularity made "walkman" an unofficial term for personal stereos of any producer or brand. By 2010, when production stopped, Sony had built about 200 million cassette-based Walkmans.
The Compact Cassette, also commonly called a cassette tape, audio cassette, or simply tape or cassette, is an analog magnetic tape recording format for audio recording and playback. Invented by Lou Ottens and his team at the Dutch company Philips in 1963, Compact Cassettes come in two forms, either already containing content as a prerecorded cassette (Musicassette), or as a fully recordable "blank" cassette. Both forms have two sides and are reversible by the user. Although other tape cassette formats have also existed—for example the Microcassette—the generic term cassette tape is normally always used to refer to the Compact Cassette because of its ubiquity.
Vehicle audio is equipment installed in a car or other vehicle to provide in-car entertainment and information for the vehicle occupants. Until the 1950s it consisted of a simple AM radio. Additions since then have included FM radio (1952), 8-track tape players, cassette players, record players, CD players (1984), DVD players, Blu-ray players, navigation systems, Bluetooth telephone integration, and smartphone controllers like CarPlay and Android Auto. Once controlled from the dashboard with a few buttons, they can now be controlled by steering wheel controls and voice commands.
The 8-track tape is a magnetic tape sound recording technology that was popular from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s, when the compact cassette, which pre-dated the 8-track system, surpassed it in popularity for pre-recorded music.
JVC is a Japanese brand owned by JVCKenwood. Founded in 1927 as the Victor Talking Machine Company of Japan and later as Victor Company of Japan, Ltd., the company is best known for introducing Japan's first televisions and for developing the Video Home System (VHS) video recorder.
A cassette deck is a type of tape machine for playing and recording audio cassettes that does not have a built-in power amplifier or speakers, and serves primarily as a transport. It can be a part of an automotive entertainment system, a part of a portable mini system or a part of a home component system. In the latter case it is also called a component cassette deck or just a component deck.
A CD player is an electronic device that plays audio compact discs, which are a digital optical disc data storage format. CD players were first sold to consumers in 1982. CDs typically contain recordings of audio material such as music or audiobooks. CD players may be part of home stereo systems, car audio systems, personal computers, or portable CD players such as CD boomboxes. Most CD players produce an output signal via a headphone jack or RCA jacks. To use a CD player in a home stereo system, the user connects an RCA cable from the RCA jacks to a hi-fi and loudspeakers for listening to music. To listen to music using a CD player with a headphone output jack, the user plugs headphones or earphones into the headphone jack.
A boombox is a transistorized portable music player featuring one or two cassette tape recorder/players and AM/FM radio, generally with a carrying handle. Beginning in the mid 1980s, a CD player was often included. Sound is delivered through an amplifier and two or more integrated loudspeakers. A boombox is a device typically capable of receiving radio stations and playing recorded music. Many models are also capable of recording onto cassette tapes from radio and other sources. In the 1990s, some boomboxes were available with minidisc recorders and players. Designed for portability, boomboxes can be powered by batteries as well as by line current. The boombox was introduced to the American market during the late 1970s. The desire for louder and heavier bass led to bigger and heavier boxes; by the 1980s, some boomboxes had reached the size of a suitcase. Some larger boomboxes even contained vertically mounted record turntables. Most boomboxes were battery-operated, leading to extremely heavy, bulky boxes.
Nakamichi Corp., Ltd. is a Japanese consumer electronics brand that originated in Japan and gained a name from the 1970s onwards for innovative and high quality audio cassette decks. Nakamichi is a subsidiary of Chinese holding company Nimble Holdings.
Aiwa (アイワ) is a consumer electronics brand owned and used by various companies in different regions of the world. American and other regions are owned by Chicago-based Aiwa Corporation. Towada Audio based in Tokyo owns the rights to the brand in Japan and other countries, and has been manufacturing Aiwa-branded products since 2017. In Mexico and other countries in Latin America, the rights are owned by Audio Mobile Americas, S.A.
Kenwood is a Japanese brand of consumer electronics. It has been owned by JVCKenwood ever since October 2011, when Kenwood Corporation merged with JVC. Kenwood manufactures audio equipment such as cassette tape decks/recorders, amateur radio (ham) equipment, radios, cellular phones, speakers, and other consumer electronics.
Durabrand is a private label tradename of Walmart, which was introduced in early 1999. It is currently available in the UK through ASDA, where it was previously known as Pacific.
Emerson Radio Corporation is one of the United States' largest volume consumer electronics distributors and has a recognized trademark in continuous use since 1912. The company designs, markets, and licenses many product lines worldwide, including products sold, and sometimes licensed, under the brand name G Clef, an homage to Emerson's logo.
Orion Corp., Ltd. was a Japanese consumer electronics company that was established in 1958 in Osaka, Japan. Their devices were branded as "Orion". The company used to be called Orion Electric, until Brain and Capital Holdings, Inc. acquired it in 2019. From 1984 to their acquisition, their headquarters were based in Echizen, Fukui, Japan. Products manufactured and sold under the Orion brand included transistor radios, radio/cassette recorders, car stereos, and home stereo systems. Before their acquisition, they were of the world's largest OEM television and video equipment manufacturers, primarily supplying major-brand OEM customers. Orion produced around six million televisions and twelve million DVD player and TV combo units each year until 2019. Most of their products were manufactured in Thailand.
Here is the further information about the history of Sony, an iconic Japanese multinational conglomerate company.
Luxman is a brand name of Japanese Luxman Corporation (ラックスマン株式会社), a company that manufactures luxury audio components. Luxman produces a variety of high-end audio products which include turntables, amplifiers, receivers, tape decks, CD players and speakers
Ferguson Electronics is an electronics company specializing in small electronics items such as radios and set top boxes.
Voice Of Music was the premier brand of V-M Corporation, an American audio equipment manufacturing company.
Weltron is an electronics manufacturer and retailer, based in Oxford, North Carolina. It was previously located in Durham, North Carolina.
Howard Philip Ladd (1921-2015) was an electrical engineer, inventor, marketer, entrepreneur and bank founder. Ladd was a pioneering giant in American and international consumer audio and video electronics.
