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November 30, 2017

Compact Discs: Still a Valuable piece of Technology

What comes in your mind when you hear about the CD’s i.e. the compact discs. Are they still useful or are they outdated? As the field of technology is exponentially advancing with new gadgets, like memory sticks and portable hard-drives, most of us consider CD’s to be less important in our present generation. However, if we are to talk about the CD’s some decades ago, people considered them to be one of the most important discoveries in the world. CD’s are the results of numerous experiments and trials and errors, and although they seem to be old fashioned today, we still use them for various purposes.

The story of the CD started in 1957 with experiments involving the rudimentary video disc, by the Italian Antonio Rubbiani, who inspired an entire generation of scientists to consider the digital technology line. After twelve years, Philips came up with the idea and started working on the Audio Long Play (ALP) disc that used laser technology and rivaled traditional analogue vinyl records. The APA disc was small, occupied less space than LPs, and played for longer durations than its vinyl counterparts. However, the steps taken were not so effective.1

The head of Philips’ CD-Lab, Joop Sinjou, with the first CD | Courtesy of Philips

Later, a Dutch scientist named Klass Compaan of Philips Research conceived the idea for the CD. He teamed with another scientist, Piet Kramer, who together introduced the first color videodisc prototype in 1972.2 As the ideas and experiments for digital disc technology continued, in 1978 the project took a new pace on a more serious note. Philips launched the Compact Disc Project. Philips, by then, had started paying more heed to the work done by its digital audio research department. All this research into the project led to a very interesting juncture. As Philips had already released the commercial laser disc player into the market, the company was far ahead of its competitors in terms of the physical design of the compact disc. However, Philips had one major problem. The company lacked the experience of digital audio recording to develop the compact disc any further.3

This is when Sony came into the story. Sony, who was also working at a Compact Disc, had a problem of the exact opposite nature to contend with. It had over a decade of experience in developing and implementing the best digital audio circuitry, but the company lacked the knowledge for making the actual physical CD. As a result of these developments, Sony and Philips stunned the world in 1979 with the announcement that both companies would work jointly for the development of Compact Discs during a conference in Japan. Thus, a new deal was forged, and the two companies worked together for the next couple of years.4

Sony & Philips announce a joint CD task-force in 1979 | Courtesy of Philips

Engineers at Philips concentrated on the physical design of the disc. Philips concentrated on reading the information from the pits on the disc surface using laser technology whereas Sony’s digital technology specialists worked on the analogue to a digital conversation circuit, with the major emphasis on encoding the digital signals and designing the error correction code.5

In the year 1980, Philips and Sony, in general acceptance of certain specifications regarding the CDs, brought out the Red Book. The Red Book is the 1980 document that provides the specifications for the standard compact disc developed by Sony and Philips. The name was attributed to the color of the cover of the first publication. The Red Book contained specifications that included the size of the disc, the recording details, the sampling, and other standards, many of which remain unchanged to this day.6

In the process of development, the size of the CD also has an interesting story to it. Philips came up with an idea of 115mm CD, but the idea had to be shelved because Sony insisted that the longest musical performance should fit on the disc. Therefore, to fit the longest recorded musical performance at 74 minutes, the size of the CD was increased to 120mm.7

Soon after this, Sony and Philips parted ways and started working separately, trying to produce their own CD-drive equipment. The first commercial CD drive was released a month earlier than Philips’ by Sony on October 1, 1982, making it a notable event in the history of CD development. The CDP-101 Compact Disc Player by Sony hit the market first in Japan, followed by Europe. It did not reach the shores of America until the early part of 1983. Sony beat Philips once again for a second time when it released the first portable CD player in the year 1984.8

Compact Disc surface 12.500 x enlarged | Courtesy of philips-historische-producten.nl

Well, a CD is a piece of technology composed of many layers, which consists of a poly-carbonate substrate that has been stamped with data from a master, with a metal reflective layer and a protective top coating. It is a system for data storage, in which digitally encoded information is placed in the form of microscopic pits on this rotating disk, which is accessed by optical readout. Data on a CD is recorded by creating microscopic pits along a single track on the metallized surface, whereas playback is incorporated by a red laser beam reflected onto the surface that measures the pits and translates them into binary information.9 The compact disk was originally developed as a music carrier providing high fidelity, random access, convenience, durability, and low cost. Its attributes made it suitable for storing diverse data from video programs to computer software and storage, and improvements allowed record-ability and erase-ability.10

Billy Joel’s 52nd Street: the first commercially released CD | Courtesy of: The First Pressing CD Collection

In 1983, over 800,000 audio compact discs were sold. For the first time in 1988, CD sales surpassed LP (Long Play vinyl) record sales.11 Each year, sales increased exponentially. In 1985 over 100 million CD’s were sold and every major electronics supplier was forced to move into the CD market. Sales for the next year were around 150 million, and the demand for CD’s overshot supply. Disc manufacturers reported that they would have sold thirty percent more if they could have made more discs.12

In the USA, music buyers were spending around thirty-five dollars per CD Record. The country had 11,000 record retailers, and 75 percent of households had one or more CD players. Some 85 million CD’s had been sold in the preceding ten years, with the average price declining from 23 to 14 euro over that period. Although CD-ROMs have become the primary data storage and distribution media during the 1990’s, the next generation in storage was the Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc, commonly referred to as DVD. The DVD standard was introduced in September 1997.13

The compact disk was originally designed as a music carrier. Subsequently, the format was extended to different forms as the standards evolved. Furthermore, CD’s would create an even greater impact on the world of computers. Newer formats that used the compact disk as their basis included the recordable CD-R and erasable CD-RW formats, and the multimedia DVD format.14 Changes in recording techniques allowed for specialized uses, such as the CD-ROM (Compact Disc Read-Only Memory) for use in computers. CD-ROMs were able to hold a wide variety of multimedia data such as video, text, animation, graphics, and audio, and were readable by personal computers.15 Furthermore, technological innovations such as the improved pinpoint light-focusing ability of the blue-violet laser beam and higher transfer rates of players and recorders has raised the capacity to nearly thirty gigabytes of data on one shiny disc.16

In the present context, CD’s are used for many other purposes than storing information. The development of interactive media in the form of interactive compact disk (CD-I) is one of the major successes. Basically, interactive CD is a form of information technology that has grown in popularity in the world of education. It is expected to make it easier for students to comprehend the material while also making the learning process more flexible and interactive.17

Microparticle and cell counting with digital microfluidic compact disc using standard CD drive | Courtesy of researchgate.net

Compact discs have huge scope in the field of health as well. The establishment of Health Diagnostic Compact Disc is one of the major findings. More particularly, the invention provides methods and reagents for producing a micro-fluidic compact disc that can be utilized with a standard computer compact disk drive to identify biological cells in a patient sample. The ability to identify and measure the patient cells applied to the HDCD with a standard computer compact disk drive eliminates the need for expensive or sophisticated diagnosis machinery. In yet another aspect, cell counting using the HDCD helps determine the effectiveness of chemotherapy, athletic ability, or athletic stamina.18

To sum it up, CD’s are one of the most important scientific discoveries in the past century. The massive jump from 1.44 MB of the floppy disk storage to the 700 MB of CD’s were ground breaking and revolutionary in the field of computers. It has not only improved the storage and recording system, but also has built a strong foundation for many other fields. Moreover, CD’s continue to evolve from simple to many formats and continue to find different uses although other alternative storage devices are also being introduced. Furthermore, CD’s can also be recycled. They are recycled into a high-quality plastic for a variety of uses, including automotive industry parts, raw materials to make plastics, office equipment, alarm boxes, street lights, and more. Therefore, there are endless possibilities for a CD.

  1. Barry Kernfeld, Pop Song Piracy: Disobedient Music Distribution since 1929 (London : University of Chicago Press, 2011), 183.
  2. Ken C. Pohlmann, The Compact Disc: A Handbook of Theory and Use (Wisconsin: Madison, 1989), 9.
  3. Scott Mueller, Upgrading and repairing PCs (Indianapolis: Que Publishing, 2008), 518.
  4. Kees A. Schouhamer Immink, “The CD Story,” Journal of the AES, vol. 46, (1998): 459-460.
  5. Kees A. Schouhamer Immink, “The CD Story,” Journal of the AES, vol. 46, (1998): 459-460.
  6. The Gale Encyclopedia of Science, 2004, s.v., “Compact Disc,” by Randall S. Frost.
  7. Kees A. Schouhamer Immink, “The CD Story,” Journal of the AES, vol. 46, (1998): 459-460.
  8. Scott Mueller, Upgrading and repairing PCs (Indianapolis: Que Publishing, 2008), 518.
  9. Dictionary of American History, 2003, s.v., “Compact Discs,” by Michael Regoli.
  10. The Gale Encyclopedia of Science, 2008, s.v. “Compact Disc,” by K. Lee Lerner and Brenda Wilmoth Lerner.
  11. Science and Its Times, 2001, s.v. “The Invention of Compact Discs,” by Rebecca J. Timmons.
  12. Innovation MastersHistory’s Best Examples of Business Transformation, 2012, s.v., “Compact Discs: From Music Recordings to Computers,” by Miranda H. Ferrara and Michele P. LaMeau.
  13. Science and Its Times, 2001, s.v. “The Invention of Compact Discs,” by Rebecca J. Timmons.
  14. McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science & Technology, 2007, s.v. “Compact Disk,” by Ken C. Pohlmann.
  15. Innovation MastersHistory’s Best Examples of Business Transformation, 2012, s.v. “Compact Discs: From Music Recordings to Computers,” by Miranda H. Ferrara and Michele P. LaMeau.
  16. Dictionary of American History, 2003, s.v. “Compact Discs,” by Michael Regoli.
  17. Nurlaila, Nurlaila, and Rusilanti Rusilanti, “Developing an Interactive Instructional Compact Disk for the Course of Basic Housekeeping,” Jurnal Pendidikan Teknologi Dan Kejuruan, Vol 23, Iss 3, no. 3: 288 (2017): 288-294.
  18. “Health Diagnostic Compact Disc,” USPTO Patent Applications, EBSCOhost.

Tags from the story

Compact Disc

Philips

Sony

Recent Comments

Cristina Cabello

This is a really cool article over the history of CD’s. I like how informative it is. I have never really thought about how data was stored. It is really interesting on how it was created. Then how Sony and Philips worked together to make it popular. This is a really great article describing how teamwork can really make am impact in the world.

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11/02/2018

1:52 pm

Christopher Sanchez

What a major throwback from burning CD’s to downloading music through your phone. This article provided enough detail about the history of CD’s. It’s crazy how Phillips and Sony worked together on CD’s to work out the problems they had but after their collaboration Sony beat them. In the end CD’s were a technology breakthrough that revolutionized technology itself.

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13/02/2018

1:52 pm

Hanadi Sonouper

This was an interesting story to read about the history and importance of CDs and how they served a purpose for the esteemed music artist. Our generation grew up around CDs, they were how we listened to our favorite artist over and over for countless times, or how we viewed our favorite movies as well. I condemn the author for writing an article that really revolutionized how technology revolutionized to today, and simply because CDs were a platform for greatness. I enjoy how she explained all the aspects that compact discs have to offer besides their normal uses, really informative and insightful.

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27/02/2018

1:52 pm

Auroara-Juhl Nikkels

I never really thought about the history of the CD before. The CD was something that was just there my whole life, I never wondered how. Your article really provided me with a lot of information in a way that was easy to follow and understand. It is pretty interesting that Sony and Philips worked together to created the Compact Disk.

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02/03/2018

1:52 pm

Rafael Lopez-Rodriguez

Honestly when I think of compact discs I always think they are outdated. But it is crazy when I think about it because most of my family still owns compact discs and actually listens to them at family parties or in the car. It was very interesting to learn about the history of how the CD came to be. I have never heard of this interesting story. Very good article!

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09/03/2018

1:52 pm

Robert Rodriguez

The CD has been around for all of my life that I’ve taken it for granted and didn’t think about how different the world was without it. From video games to music, I’ve used CD’s my whole life without really knowing its history and how it works. I like how 2 major companies collaborated in order to innovate technology for the world, who knows what life would’ve been like without this tech. I learned so much new information from this article! good job!

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11/03/2018

1:52 pm

Thomas Fraire

This was a fascinating story to peruse about the history and significance of CDs and how they filled a need for the regarded music craftsman. Our age grew up around CDs, they were the means by which we tuned in to our most loved craftsman again and again for innumerable circumstances, or how we saw our most loved motion pictures also. I censure the writer for composing an article that truly changed how innovation altered to today, and just on the grounds that CDs were a stage for enormity. I appreciate how she clarified every one of the viewpoints that conservative plates bring to the table other than their ordinary uses, extremely useful and astute.

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21/03/2018

1:52 pm

Tyler Thompson

I have never known the actual science behind the CD and how it’s able show the pictures in motion. I didn’t know that Phillips and Sony were not only partners at one point to perfect this invention, but also competitors as well. It’s also cool to see how a CD will still have many great uses, and that is is recyclable as well.

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08/04/2018

1:52 pm

Harashang Gajjar

I do not think it will disappear soon. Most music is sold on CD format nowadays. The digital format will become the main format for music distribution, either as downloading or streaming. But the CD will remain for some years as some people still prefer to have an object with booklets or any extras that sometimes come with a CD.It will become a collectors object. Although we are seeing already some high prices paid for early CD’s or rare CD’s. Have a look at ValueYourMusic, a site useful for valuing music items in all formats.

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18/08/2018

1:52 pm

Andrea Cabrera

I was very drawn by the content of this article. CDs were very present in our childhood and usually most of us associate them with music albums, however they are very convenient to store information from health investigations to the digital version of a book. Even after the rise of SD cards, USB, access codes or online links for downloading files, compact disks are present in today’s music industry. I really enjoyed that the article gave us the interesting fact of how CDs are processed and how they work.

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20/08/2018

1:52 pm

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