Information

.....This blog was created by Niles and Jack, we are middle school students, and this is our Final project, for a project we are supposed to do. We got all of our information from the internet, because this is a technology project, you can look at the links below to see the websites we got our information from have a good time on our site....

Sunday, April 24, 2011

This is our blog

Ms. K and our Class, This is Niles and Jacks Blog. For our technology Project.

The Regency TR-1

The TR-1 was the first type of portable music ever to be invented. It was released to stores in 1954, and of course made by Regency Inc. It was "The first pocket transistor radio ever to be invented". It cost $49.95, and it was a radio, so you couldn't put your own music on it, you listened to whatever was on the radio (To see one being built go to the gadget called "Videos you should watch" and click on where it says 'The making of a Regency TR-1' go to that video). The Regency TR-1 was manufactured in the U.S, and around 100,000 TR-1's were sold to customers within 12 months of being released, so basically the total profit from selling the TR-1's  was around $5,000,000 dollars in 12 months. And a useless fact, the inventors of the Regency TR-1 all won a Nobel Prize on, Nov 1st, 1956.

The Sony Walkman

The "Walkman" was produced by Sony, and it was introduced to stores in 1979, and around 150 million of them were sold. The Walkman was the second portable music player to be invented, but with the first portable music player that you insert the music into it (or use cassette tape in this case), because the TR-1 was just portable radio and the Walkman played your own music. The Walkman was a short lived victory for the portable music world because the cassette was only popular for about a decade before compact discs flushed out every other product for a long, long time.

Discman

In 1984 the Sony "Discman, " was invented, and like I said, the Walkman and cassette tapes were not going to last long before CDs would take over, that is exactly what happened. The Discman came out and started a Sony revolution, CDs. After the Discman was invented, Sony came out with a lot of other portable "Disc products" then later on the Walkman had CD players built into them, and the Walkman disc players are still being made, right as you read this (or they are still being made right now, if you didn't get that), Even though they came out like 10 years ago. CDs must have been a huge success for Sony, because of how the CDs we put into production of mostly all of Sony’s products. CDs are still "New" and "Cool" but now that we have Ipods and Mp3 files, I doubt if they will still be made in about 10 years, because all the music is going to be on Itunes (Or what we think is going to happen). So I guess we will have to wait and see what happens...

Thursday, April 21, 2011

MP Man

The MP Man was invented in 1998, and instead of it using cassette tapes, Cds, or the radio, it used MP3 files that you would download off of your computer. It held about 8 average length tracks (around 32 minutes of music). It crawled its way on the shelves of stores in the summer of 1998 and it ran on a rechargable NIiMH battery pack. Because the device used solid state memory, it had about 9 hours of battery life (which is better than many music devices of today). To bad it wasn't a big hit.

Ipod

The I-pod is the current dominant force in the portable music market. The I-pod has come a long way too though. The I-pod was invented in 2001, and it started as kind of like a mp3 player then progressed, the shuffle came out, then nano, and now the touch and each with multiple models. The I-pod is the current "Number one" in the modern music world and Apple© will carry it as far as they can. And of January 2011 Apple said that over 304 million Ipods have been sold (world wide), and who knows what Apple© has in store for us next, you never know....

Where is Portable Music Heading?

Well, technology has come a long way in the past 32 years, it started out as a radio, and then advanced to cassette tapes, then the Cd was invented, then MP3 files, now you can just download anything you want, like movies, music, TV shows, you can download millions of apps, and record video all on you music player device. We wouldn't have had the Ipod invented if it wasn't for the MP3 players and all of the other ones that lead up to it. Technology has advanced so much, and who knows what it will look like in the future, maybe the devices will be the size of a dime, maybe you can customize the shape, just think of how many more apps will be invented, how much more music it will hold, and all the new music thats going to come out, it will be way more then just a music playing device. But you never know, maybe it will just stay the same for another 20 years, but I doubt that, if it has evolved so much in the past 30 years, why would it just stop now? We will just have to wait and see what happens, just imagine what will happen to the music playing market if it keeps advancing like it is? What will that look like next for portable music? I guess we will just have to wait and see.......

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