1990's Street Beat Portable Cassette Player

By the 1990s, the portable cassette player had become almost perfectly personal. A tape, a pair of headphones and a machine small enough to carry were all it took to bring an entire album along for the day. The Street Beat 820M comes from the later years of that experience, just before portable digital music began changing the rules.

Its compact size hides how mechanical cassette playback really was. Gears, rollers and spindles had to pull a delicate strip of magnetic tape through the machine at exactly the right speed. Those once-hidden pieces give this small player a surprising amount of visual complexity.

• Original Piece: 1990's Street Beat Portable Cassette Player
• Era: 1990's
• Manufacturer: Street Beat
• Model: 820M
• Original Function: Portable Cassette Player
• Frame Size: 11 x 11 in.
• Finished Dimensions: 11 x 11 x 2 in.
• Colors: Plasma Purple, Console White
• Frame Color: Black
• Backer Color: White
• Materials: Wood / Original Materials
• Functional: No
• One of One: This is an original, one-of-a-kind Electronic Afterlife piece.