The first portable music player was invented in 1924.

Record being placed on a Mikiphone

Long before the Walkman and iPod, there was the Mikiphone. Invented in 1924 by Hungarian siblings Miklós and Étienne Vadász, the Mikiphone was a portable record player designed to be compact enough to fit into a pocket or purse. It featured a turntable, a tonearm with a needle, and a circular metal resonator that amplified the sound in place of a traditional phonograph’s horn. No power supply was needed — an internal spring drive mechanism rotated the turntable. Everything folded up into a round metal case that measured just over 4 inches across and just under 2 inches thick, more closely resembling an oversized pocket watch than a miniature gramophone.

The Mikiphone was manufactured by Swiss company Paillard, which was known for its watches and music boxes. Advertisements at the time called the music player a “marvel of compactness” and boasted it was “ideal for picnics, car jaunts, [and] river trips.” Ads even extolled it as “literally the Eighth Wonder of the World.” It was indeed novel for its time, but despite its small size, the device was ultimately a bit cumbersome. The Mikiphone required that several parts — including small pieces such as the needle and the record weight — be carefully assembled and disassembled for each use, and when put together, it primarily played 10-inch, 78 RPM records — hardly a pocket-sized piece of media. Between 1925 and 1927, Paillard manufactured around 180,000 units, but by 1928 sales had plummeted, and Mikiphones were being let go at a major discount as a discontinued product. Today, the Mikiphone is known as the originator of portable music and is a prized collectible.

By the Numbers

Did you know?

The Walkman was originally called the “Soundabout” in the U.S.

When Sony released its revolutionary portable cassette player, it wasn’t universally known as the Walkman. In the United States, the device was called the “Soundabout”; in the U.K. it was called the “Stowaway”; and in Australia, it was the “Freestyle.” At the time, retail companies outside Sony’s home in Japan thought “Walkman” wasn’t right for Western markets — another suggested name for the U.S. market was “Sony Disco Jogger.” But the Walkman name had already gained traction in Japan, where, upon the player’s 1979 release, early sales far exceeded expectations: Sony predicted moving 5,000 units a month, but the Walkman sold upwards of 50,000 in just the first two months. In 1980, Sony co-founder Akio Morita decided the Walkman name would be used worldwide, though advertisements show the Soundabout moniker held on in the U.S. for another few years.