The Sony Stowaway TPS-L2 was the first-ever portable stereo, designed and produced by Sony in 1979. 'Stowaway', which would later become universally known as the 'Walkman', was developed in response to the request from Nasaru Ibuka, founder of the Sony Corporation in Tokyo, for a stereo cassette player that could be carried around in the pocket. The stereo was marketed as the 'world's smallest stereo' and claimed to produce a quality of sound comparable to stereo equipment 100 times its size. The total weight of the Stowaway was 391 grams.

When the first generation of Walkmans was launched, alternative names were used in different markets. For their name, Sony America jad proposed, 'Sony Disco Jogger', due to the popularity of disco and jogging at that time. This was vetoed by Sony's Chairman, Akio Morita, who believed that an older demographic should not be excluded from potential purchasers and that the word 'disco' would risk alienating this demographic. The name eventually selected was 'Soundabout,' coined from the expression 'walk about'.

As Walkman quickly became popular in Japan with visitors to Japan buying them as gifts to take home, the product name 'Walkman' became well known overseas. In April 1980, Morita declared at a sales meeting in the US that 'Walkman' would be used as the standard product name worldwide.