When music first became portable: Remember how it felt the first time you had a personalized soundtrack to the views you came across every day? Or the thrill of being gifted an amazing mixtape? Sony’s Walkman revolutionized how the world listens to music. “The 1980s could well have been the Walkman decade … Its launch coincided with the birth of the aerobics craze, and millions used the Walkman to make their workouts more entertaining,” wrote Meaghan Haire for Time in 2009.

The story of the Walkman: Kozo Ohsone, general manager of the tape recorder division, based the first prototype on Sony’s Pressman, a portable cassette recorder mainly targeting journos. Sony went on to release the first portable cassette tape player — the blue and silver Walkman TPS-L2 — on 1 July 1979 for USD 150, according to The Verge’s Carl Franzen. It weighed 14 ounces and had two headphone jacks for shared listening. 200 mn Walkman cassette players were sold until Sony decided to retire the cassette player from the market in 2010, The Telegraph reported. Of course there were other Walkman forms: CD, Mini-Disc, MP3. But, you know, ‘Walkman’ means ‘cassette’.

The inventor: The Walkman inventor, Andreas Pavel, had called it the “stereobelt,” “which he saw more as a means to "add a soundtrack to real life" than an item to be mass marketed,” wrote Larry Rohter for The New York Times back in 2005. Pavel speaks about the first time he made it work, with his girlfriend in Switzerland in February 1972, and it’s magical. "I was in the woods in St. Moritz, in the mountains," he told the NYT. "The snow was falling down. I pressed the button, and suddenly we were floating. It was an incredible feeling, to realize that I now had the means to multiply the aesthetic potential of any situation."

Jumping back to the now: Did you know you could still buy a Walkman? There are new releases, just a digital music player really, by Sony, from USD 65 for to a gold-plated USD 3,200 Walkman. Then there is the ‘Vintage’ Walkman — we’re not sure how far exactly Vintage goes back — on eBay ranging from USD 1.06 to USD 1,800 for, uhm, collectors.

Want to feel old? Check out this video, which went viral years ago. Watch as (lazy, unappreciative) kids were baffled by this strange device and express disbelief at the painstaking act of fast-forwarding your way through to the next song (runtime 7:22). Wait for the “Oh, my grandpa used to have this!”