Launched in 1979, the Walkman was something of a game-changer, especially for those who didn’t want to talk to others on public transit. For its 40th anniversary, Sony put together this celebratory video charting the little contraption’s evolution through its many guises over the years. I graduated from the thing around 1990, moving on to the Discman and the Minidisc player (both in video above) before the iPod, and finally the original iPhone in 2007. In retrospect the Walkman actually seems a burdensome thing, one that would occasionally eat my beloved mixed tapes and cost me a small fortune in AA batteries. But it let me bring Black Flag on the bus to school, and you couldn’t put a price on that in 1986.