Walkman crowed best gadget of 50 years

NEW YORK, Dec. 26 (UPI) -- The Sony Walkman has been crowned by PC World magazine as the greatest gadget of the past 50 years.

When the blue and silver cassette player debuted in 1979 for $200 "no one had ever seen anything quite like it," the magazine noted. The first units had double headphone jacks to share music with friends, but that feature was eventually dropped.

Ranked second on the list is the Apple iPod. More than eight out of 10 digital players sold by mid-2005 were iPods.

"If the Walkman is the aging king of portable media players, Apple's iPod is prince regent," PC World proclaimed. ReplayTV and TiVo tied for third place followed by the 1996 introduction of the "personal data assistant" PalmPilot 1000.

No. 5 was Sony's CDP-101, the first commercial compact disc player introduced that in 1982 "ushered in the age of digital sound" at a cool $900. No. 6 was the Motorola StarTAC mobile phone, introduced in 1996 and paved the way for today's cellphones.

The Atari Video Computer System came in at No. 7, followed by the Polaroid SX-70 Land Camera at No. 8, the M-Systems DiskOnKey at No. 9 and filling out the Top 10, the 1954 Regency TR-1 transistor pocket radio.