Tech Shout!

It’s been exactly 25 years for the birth of the compact disc, which took place at a Philips factory in Langenhagen, Germany. The invention of the CD, with its superior sound quality and scratch-free durability, has surely ushered in a technological revolution in the music industry. This marked a definite shift from analogue to digital music technology.

In fact, it was obviously only after the invention of the CD that newer media such as the DVD and now the Blu-ray disc have come into action.

Here is some mighty trivia for all you people. The world’s first CD was first created in the Philips factory in Germany that belonged to the recording company Polygram, which Philips owned at the time.

The first CD that was pressed here was “the Visitors” by ABBA. Three years later by November 1982, a catalogue of some 150 odd CDs were available in the market. No doubt it may have only been classical music that was available at the time, but then again, those were the good old days of clean, pure music sans pop, hip hop and all the other nonsense that’s being released today.

Along with the introduction of the first CDs in November 1982 was the introduction of the first ever CD players in Japan, which included the Philips CD100. In March of 1983, such CD players were released in the US and European markets.

Moving back in the history of the CD, it is also interesting to know that Sony and Philips had actually partnered in 1979 to develop compact discs. In 1980, many decisions were jointly taken by the two powerhouses regarding such matters as the disc diameter.

The original target storage capacity for the world’s first CD was maintained at one hour of audio content, while the disc diameter was decided to be sufficient at 115mm. However, interestingly, both parties decided to extend this capacity to 74 minutes so that the CD could accommodate a complete performance of Beethoven’s 9th symphony. Thus, we can safely say that if it weren’t for Beethoven and his grand music, we wouldn’t be having a whole hour plus fourteen minutes on CDs currently available today!

Then in June 1980, after much trial and error, Philips and Sony proposed the final new standard known as the “Red Book”. It contained all the technical specifications for all CD and CD-ROM standards.

Piet Kramer, who at the time was a member of the optical group at Philips that made a significant contribution to the CD technology, commented on Philips’ and Sony’s collaborative work: “When Philips teamed up with Sony to develop the CD, our first target was to win over the world for the CD. We did this by collaborating openly to agree on a new standard. For Philips, this open innovation was a new approach – and it paid off. In the late 70s and early 80s, we never imagined that one day the computing and entertainment industries would also opt for the digital CD for storing the growing volume of data for computer programs and movies.”

Then in 1985, Philips tied-up with the Dire Straits, also known as the ‘Sultans of the Swing’, to further promote the CD. In fact, their first rather infamous album ‘Brothers in Arms’ was the first fully digital recording (DDD) to be released in the market. This album went on to become the top selling CD at the time and further went on to claim the title as the third greatest CD of the decade!

Now 25 years later, over 200 billion CDs have been sold worldwide. With a wide range of media available freely in the markets globally such as the Blu-ray disc, High-definition Disc, DVD R, DVD RW, CD-RW, CD-ROM, CD-R, we can safely say that it is the CD who is the forefather of this extensive family of optical discs.

Lastly, here’s a very interesting fact. Even though the CD of the present is just 1.2mm thick, if all CDs that were ever produced were to be piled up, the stack of CDs would circle the earth six times!