One of Sony's cofounders, Masaru Ibuka, traveled often for business and found himself lugging Sony's bulky TC-D5 cassette recorder around to listen to music. He asked Norio Ohga, then Executive Deputy President, to design a light weight, playback-only, stereo version, optimized for use with headphones. Ibuka brought the result — a compact, high-quality music player—to Chairman Akio Morita and reportedly said, "Try this. Don't you think a stereo cassette player that you can listen to while walking around is a good idea?" Mr. Morita, liked the idea and asked that the "Walkman" be commercialized, (ref. 1) Sony sold over 300 million Walkmans, a tiny pocket stereo cassette tape player, between 1979 and 2010.
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