Discmans known as Sony Discmans were battery-powered portable compact disc players with headphones. It was used to listen to music while on the move. There were several evolutions to the Discman product, including the addition of radio, reception, and the ability to play recordable and rewritable discs.
Personal audio equipment, such as mini radios capable of receiving SW, MW, and FM broadcasts, became very popular in the 1960s. Demand for portable cassette players that allowed choice of music playback was high in the 1970s. .
Sony was the first company to introduce a mini radio to the market in the late 1950s. A culture of miniaturization developed, resulting in the launch of the first Sony Walkman on the market in 1980. It was a quick success because it was a little smaller. bigger than a tape cassette. He encouraged Sony executives to invent a compact disc player to achieve the same goals.
The first compact disc player was introduced to the market in 1982, it was called the CDP-101 and it was marketed by Sony. Sony announced that compact disc technology was jointly developed by Philips, Polygram and CBS/Sony. Billy Joel’s 52nd Street was the first commercial audio compact disc and was released on the CBS/Sony label.
The head of the Engineering Development Department, Katsuaki Tsurushima, had the idea of creating a portable CD player in 1983. He hoped to create a CD player that was no bigger than three or four stacked CD cases and sold at an affordable price. . The idea became known as the CD CD project.
In late 1984, Sony engineers managed to fit a CD player into a box a little smaller than a block of wood. The D-50, nicknamed the Discman, was Sony’s first portable CD player released for Japanese music lovers and Sony was confident of its profitability. The D-50 never shipped under the Discman brand and is never the precursor to all Sony Discman portable CD players.
CD players were very vulnerable to skipping in the early days. As the D-50 was no different and Sony’s first portable CD player was portable only, using this first generation Discman while on the go required careful walking, jogging and other such activities.
The technology did not improve significantly as the international Sony Discman models were very similar to the D-50. The Discman D-100 is particularly a bit slimmer than the D-50. Compact display technology had improved by 1987 to the point that the D-20 was able to offer a built-in battery compartment. Sony had produced the D-66 Discman in 1992. In the early 2000s, there was a growth of MP3 music and significant design of the Sony Discman with Sony’s ‘G Protection’ anti-skip system.
The Discman moniker was dropped and CD Walkman was renamed in 2000. At the same time, Sony introduced the ‘W’ logo made up of connected dots. The trademark remains the property of Sony, who reserves the right to revive the trademark in the future.