History Of Portable Music Players

History Of Portable Music PlayersBy : Deion Petty

Timeline

November 1 , 1954 Transistor Radio October 23,2001 iPod Classic June 1, 1984 Walkman September 5, 2007 iPod Touch

How did Today’s music come about

1877

: Thomas Alva Edison created the cylinder phonograph which pioneered the recording and playback of human voice.

1888

: German inventor Emile Berliner's gramophone displaced the phonograph by utilizing the then mass produced flat discs such as LP records. This marked the start of a boom in the music industry and is where the Grammy Music Awards originated from.

1925

: New technology gave rise to electric record players which dominated the industry as it no longer relied on a manual hand crank.

1965

: 8-track tapes were the first attempts to bring music out of households onto the streets via automobiles. They are also known as the 'car audio'.

1978

: Sony ushered in an era which completely altered the music industry when they

popularised

the Walkman '

Soundabout

' - a portable audio cassette player capable of Hi-

Fi

stereo sound.

1983

: Again introduced by Sony together with Philips, glossy and shiny CD players, also known as the Discman, eventually replaced cassette players by the end of the 1980s with their superiority in sound quality and ability to skip tracks.

1995

: Rewritable CDs were introduced which allowed for mixed CDs, boosting the popularity of Discmans.

1992

: With minidiscs, music players finally became more light, compact and pocket-sized.

New Generation

1998

: The dawn of the

MPMan

was the first flash mp3 player to be released by a Korean company which allowed high quality digital music recording that could be transferred from computers to portable layers.

1999

: Compaq introduced the first hard-drive based mp3 player which deviated from the flash drive norm.

2001

: Apple joined the market with the iPod Classic comprising of 5/10GB of space and a mechanical scroll wheel.

2002

: First attempts to create a media player with by

Archos

to allow images and video playback but was unsuccessful due to its heavily bug-ridden system.

2002/04

: iPod Classic Generation 2 pioneered the use of touch sensitive controls to scroll through playlists. Zen Touch followed.

2004/05

: Like Discmans and minidiscs, mp3 players become smaller with the emergence of players such as iPod Mini,

Nano

and even Shuffle.

2005-07

: iPod Video, Zen Vision,

iRiver

and several other brands of players successfully introduce video playbacks on their players which

Archos

failed to

realise

earlier.

2007/08

: iPod Touch marks a whole new beginning for the media player industry with never before heard capabilities, legal third party applications and

organisation

tools all fully controlled by a touch screen.

The transistor radio was the first portable radio. It was made in 1954 by a Japanese company. It was the most popular way of listening to music in its time. Bell Laboratories demonstrated the first transistor on December 23, 1947. The scientific team at Bell Laboratories responsible for the solid-state amplifier included William Shockley, Walter Houser Brattain, and John Bardeen. After obtaining patent protection, the company held a news conference on June 30, 1948, at which a prototype transistor radio was demonstrated.

The walkman was built in 1978 by Sony. The CD walkman was initially launched in 1984. It was officially called the Discman and this name has been used informally to refer to such players. The names Walkman, Pressman, Watchmen, Scoopman, Discman, and Talkman are trademarks of Sony, and have been applied to a wide range of portable entertainment devices manufactured by the company.

iPod Classic is the first iPod created by Apple Inc. It was released on October 23, 2001. It had 5GB and can hold up too 1,000 songs. Now the iPod Classic is referred too as the iPod. The second generation iPod was introduced on July 17, 2002. Using the same body style as the first generation, the hold switch was redesigned, a cover was added to the FireWire port, and the mechanical wheel was replaced with a touch-sensitive wheel.

The iPod Touch is a portable media player, personal digital camera, and Wi-Fi mobile plantform designed and marketed by Apple Inc. The product was launched on September 5,2007, at an event called the “beat goes on”. The iPod Touch adds the multitouch graphical user interface to the iPod line. It is the first iPod with wireless access to the iTunes store

These music players are environment friendly. This affected the way people listen to music, now its not just listening to music you can get on the internet, play games , text people, and make phone calls. So they are much more than a music player. There are numerous positive effects of iPods on both indivuals and society as a whole. Not only do they fill the ears of listeners with music that makes them happy, iPods also maintain personal space, encourage self-expression, and strengthen community. Many people fear that the unintended implications of the iPod are causing irreversible damage upon society. The root of those fears center around the alleged isolating properties of iPods, the increase in iPod-related theft, and branding of users.