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Morita was completely absorbed in the new business. While Ibuka was adept at spotting new and interesting technologies and motivating his staff to develop them, Morita was the one who had the vision required to turn technologies into products. Since the founding of Sony, the two men had combined these different, but complementary, talents to great effect.
Morita said to Ibuka, This product is going to enable young people to listen to music anytime, anywhere. But the headphones are bigger than the device itself. Can't we do something about that? On hearing that, Ibuka remembered an R&D meeting two or three months earlier, at which there was talk of developing lightweight, open-air type headphones.
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Sure enough, when he went to the Research Laboratory, he found exactly what he was looking for. The development of the compact and extremely lightweight H-AIR MDR3 headphones was virtually finished. While most conventional headphones at that time weighed between 300 to 400 grams, the H-AIR headphones weighed just 50 grams. Furthermore, the new headphone driver units that fitted over the listeners' ears were only 23 millimeters across, much smaller than the 56-58 millimeters that was normal for the oval-shaped, earmuff type headphones developed previously. Despite being so small and light weight, the headphones produced great sound.
The H-AIR headphones were included in the portable stereo project in March 1979. Between them, Morita and Ibuka had successfully brought together technologies developed independently by different sections of Sony.
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