Growing Demand for Retro Gadgets
Rewind time and you quickly see how technology is speeding up. And as we stampede to buy the next smartphone, tablet and laptop as soon as they hit the market, we leave behind a trail of gadgets and gizmos that the manufacturers tell us have reached the end of their useful lives, to be forever logged them off into redundant obscurity.
Or are they?
Gadgets that once seemed destined to be mere footnotes in the history of technological development are now becoming increasingly sought after by a growing retro community who believe they still have an intrinsic value in our throwaway society. They recognise that just as there would be no Lady Gaga without Madonna, these eighties' classics are historical artefacts with a direct ancestral lineage to today's iPads, Androids, eReaders and next generation consoles.
Chunky and clunky they may look today, but they are also representatives of the many mavericks and pioneers who paved the way for today's global tech monoliths to take, tinker and refine them to meet modern consumer demands.
From the Walkman to the Sinclair ZX81 these surviving examples of retro techno are nostalgic throwbacks to a time when consuming music and games meant the odd crash, reboot, the occasional tangled cassette and a little more patience. But they are also attracting ardent fans who are rediscovering the pixelated pleasures they can still offer today.
We take a look back to the future of technology that has never really gone away by pressing play on the Walkman!
Music on the Go
In the UK, the ubiquitous Sony Walkman (or Stowaway as it was originally called) quickly became synonymous with joggers, teenagers trudging to school and the unlikely figure of the Peter Pan of Pop, Cliff Richard, in his 1981 hit 'Wired for Sound', which featured him wearing a Walkman while bravely roller skating around Milton Keynes with a bevy of lycra clad skaters.
Walkman TPS-L2. Image Copyright Kafziel / Wikipedia / Creative Commons
The Walkman represented freedom and entertainment on the go. Since its first appearance as the Walkman TPS-L2 in 1979 and despite having no recording function, it soon became an icon of the era, with the word 'Walkman' entering the Oxford English Dictionary in 1986. It also helped to trigger the new craze for aerobics and by the time Sony eventually ceased production in 2010 due to falling sales an estimated 200 million of the portable cassette players had been sold.
Today the Sony Walkman has been added to the Design Museum's collection (whether they also have an accompanying pencil to rewind the cassette tape that intermittently spooled out we're not sure!).
