How Sony’s Founder Gave Us the Greatest Gift: Time

Before streaming queues and “Next Episode” buttons, missing your favorite show meant really missing it. No rewind. No replay.

Enter Akio Morita, Sony’s entrepreneurial founder and low-key time wizard.

In the 1950s, he handed us control over sound with tape recorders—finally letting us replay that favorite song. 

He coined the term “time shifting” when he launched the Betamax, letting people record and watch video on their schedule, not the TV network’s.

Then came the Walkman—because Morita, like Walt Disney, never underestimated the power of youth at play. Why sit still when you could take your music on the move? Suddenly, every bike ride, every mall trip had a personal soundtrack.

And if that weren’t enough, when he wanted to hear music such as Beethoven’s Ninth without flipping a record or a tape, he helped invent the compact disc, turning music into sleek, digital continuous magic.

What Morita really did with everything he made was press pause on the constraints of real-time. He gave us the power to watch, listen, and live on our own terms—long before binge-watching and playlists ruled the world. 

So next time you hit pause on your Stranger Things rewatch or throw on a retro playlist, remember who made “time shifting” a thing.