The Pre-Walkman: SONY TCM-600

Before SONY launches the famous first walkman, the TPS-L2, there were the personal and bussiness recorders. Those were used to take voice notes mainly, but they were not so popular between the youth or the entire population; they were just tools.

But SONY used one of them as a start point to develop what will soon change the world forever: the TCM-600.

The rest of the story can be read here, and everyone knows it: the walkman was a world revolution. Here you can see how evident is that the TPS-L2 derives from the TCM-600:

I recently got this brand new, boxed, TCM-600 and I’m so happy to have this little piece of history. However, thanks to the excellent research made by Sotza user in this article, it looks like the main prototype of the TPS-L2 was derived from the BM-12 and not the TCM-600. Anyway, both the TCM-600 and the BM-12 are just close to identical.