Although not the first cassette player in history, it was Sony's technological marvel that achieved the first marketing success. Its first model was called the TPS‑L2 and was released in 1979. The origin story is linked to Masaru Ibuka, who was then Sony's honorary president. In fact, Sony had created a "personal tape player recorder" called the TC‑D5 in 1978. Despite its good sound quality, it sold for a steep $1,000 and buyers were virtually nonexistent. Ibuka used this recorder while traveling by plane to other countries for work. However, the device was very heavy and cumbersome for everyday use. Therefore he gave the cassette‑recorder team a task to optimise the device for his personal convenience. A team led by Kozo Ohsone carried out the modifications, removed the record function, made the unit stereo, and created the "pressman". Ibuka liked the result and proposed bringing a similar device to market. In February 1979 Sony president Akio Morita instructed the engineers to develop, for Ibuka, a version that would cost less but retain the same sound quality, and to have it ready by June 21. Morita himself was skeptical about its viability, but Ohsone, wary of the reorganisation taking place at Sony and the merger of his division into another division, quickly solved the problem with his own team. As for the name, Sony feared that "walkman" sounded too Japanese for the West, so the marketing department was told to advertise the device as "Freestyle" in Sweden, "Soundabout" in the United States, and "Stowaway" in Britain. Nevertheless, when Morita visited Sony employees in Paris, the employees' children asked when the "walkman" would come to France. Because of those children, Sony decided to keep the name "walkman" and introduced the player globally under that name. In ten years Sony sold 50 million walkmans. The player became so popular that it entered pop culture; the word "walkman" is now used generically for cassette players and even appears in the Oxford Dictionary with that meaning.
