God Bless the BBC

Image via Wikipedia

A 13-year-old reviews the Walkman, which just turned 30:

My friends couldn’t imagine their parents using this monstrous box, but there was interest in what the thing was and how it worked.

In some classes in school they let me listen to music and one teacher recognised it and got nostalgic.

It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape. That was not the only naive mistake that I made; I mistook the metal/normal switch on the Walkman for a genre-specific equaliser, but later I discovered that it was in fact used to switch between two different types of cassette.

Another notable feature that the iPod has and the Walkman doesn’t is “shuffle”, where the player selects random tracks to play. Its a function that, on the face of it, the Walkman lacks. But I managed to create an impromptu shuffle feature simply by holding down “rewind” and releasing it randomly – effective, if a little laboured.

It seems a bit like carrying around a turntable now, doesn’t it? An even worse piece of technology, though, was the Discman. For all its “playing CDs” awesomeness, you couldn’t actually move while using it. Which sort of negated the whole idea.

Just goes to show, material things fade. Get outside today. Watch some fireworks tomorrow. And have a great holiday.