The invention that made Greg Kihn music portable. (Image by Kafziel.)

Twenty-two years before Apple’s iPod started a personal music revolution, Sony caused one of its own with the Walkman. First produced in 1979, the radio-cassette player became ubiquitous, eventually selling more than 400 million units. Understandably, Sony has just announced it will cease producing the Walkman, though a Chinese company will continue manufacturing and selling the item in Asia and the Middle East. Serkan Toto of CrunchGear has the story. (Thanks HuffPo.) An excerpt:

“Truth be told, I wasn’t aware Sony was still producing cassette Walkmans. But the company today announced it will stop manufacturing and selling these devices in Japan – after 30 years. Sony says the final lot was shipped to retailers in April this year, and once the last units are sold, there will be no cassette Walkmans from big S anymore.

The first Walkman was produced in 1979. The picture shows the TPS-L2, the world’s first portable (mass-produced) stereo, which went on sale in Japan on July 1 that year and was later exported to the US, Europe and other places. Sony says that they managed to sell over 400 million Walkmans worldwide until March 2010, and exactly 200,020,000 of those were cassette-based models.”