On May 7th, 1946, Masaru Ibuka and Akio Morita founded ’Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo’, the company that would later become Sony. After its beginnings making tape recorders and transistor radios, it rapidly expanded into myriad industries. From its ‘My First Sony’ range to early cameraphones, virtual reality headsets to Digital Audio Tapes, Sony has always tried new things, with varying degrees of success. On the company’s 75th anniversary, we’ve put together a series of articles about our experiences with some of its more interesting and unusual products.
We all have that first cherished gadget, like a game console or a CD player. If you were lucky you got one pretty young, and one built for kids specifically. Today’s children generally end up with electronics from Leapfrog and VTech (or a purpose-built kid’s audio player like Yoto or Toniebox). But when I was young there wasn’t a lot of choice: For basic computing products you’d turn to VTech or Texas Instruments, and fo