Tokyo (AFP)

It now looks like a smartphone with a touch screen, memory and a wireless connection: the Walkman audio player from the Japanese Sony still exists, though unrecognizable from its debut forty years ago.

Released in 1979, the inaugural Walkman, number TPS-L2, was a machine stuffed with mechanical parts.

"It was of an impressive precision, to the point that I wonder if we could do it again today", entrusts to AFP the engineer Hiroaki Sato, designer of the most recent Walkman and a bit nostalgic of the old ones, that one can admire currently in an exhibition organized in Tokyo for the 40 years of the range.

"I was a college student when the first model came out, and I could not afford to buy it," said Mr. Sato.

Today, this first Walkman of the name looks like an antique with its case that we had to open to house a cassette, its physical buttons to push, its battery locker or sliders for volume.

But functional copies are still circulating on the used market, including a brand new and unused, sold the trifle of 1.3 million yen (11,000 euros), almost 40 times its original price.

- "Guys" and "dolls" -

"I do not think that today's Walkman can still be used in 40 years," says engineer Sato. Because the digital audio formats will probably be very different from today and the rechargeable batteries can not be found.

However, it was necessary to take great care of magnetic cassette models to avoid gear failure. "I think it's this regular maintenance that has created a certain attachment to the object," says Sato, manipulating one of the very first copies kept by Sony.

Mr. Sato speaks of a time that the under-20s can not know, one where psychiatrists were worried about these new behaviors, when in France Leon Zitrone presented on the news program "young men, and women too, that we see in the streets with a helmet on the ears ".

Today, it is almost those who do not wear that surprise. Headphones are now wireless and walkmans without touch.

"From an early age, devices have touch screens, not buttons," says Scott Fung, a 17-year-old high school student from Hong Kong, staring at an old Walkman in Tokyo.

The astonishment does not stop there: the Walkman number 1, born of the desire of one of the founders of Sony to have fun with music on the plane, "had two takes headphones, so that couples can listen together to music, "says Sato.

On the first batch copies, a very limited series, was even written above these "guys" and "dolls" ("dudes" and "dolls") catches, an inscription that might make you scream today.

Like the passengers of a helicopter, the two users could also talk to each other by pressing the orange "hot line" button. Today everyone has their smartphone, their music, and the messages are exchanged in writing.

- Appreciated by connoisseurs -

After more than a thousand variants of Walkman (Sony stopped counting in 2004) and more than 420 million copies passed, successively from the cassette to the CD, then the MD to the flash memories, the range continues to grow .

On the one hand, there are very popular models and, on the other hand, devices containing all the best audio technologies from Sony, intended for audiophile music lovers ready to pay nearly 3,000 euros for an outstanding musical quality.

Sony is not alone in this niche of high-resolution audio: there is also the South Korean label Astell & Kern, or the Chinese manufacturers Cayin, Hiby and iBasso.

"We are still pursuing the same idea as for the first model: listen to outside music with the best possible quality", insists Mr. Sato.

© 2019 AFP