Compact Disc celebrates 25th birthday First discs rolled off
presses August 17, 1982. So, if digital lasts forever.. or 5
years, whichever comes first, CDs may (may!) last forever. The
news story follows the way that CDs changed the music industry..
the rise.. and, with other digital formats, the fall. But the
part that interests me the most are the techno-geeky deets about
how the CD came to be, well, the CD: Yet it had been a risky
technical endeavor to attempt to bring digital audio to the
masses, said Pieter Kramer, the head of the optical research
group at Philips’ labs in the Netherlands in the 1970s. “When we
started there was nothing in place,” he told The Associated
Press at Philips’ corporate museum in Eindhoven. The proposed
semiconductor chips needed for CD players were to be the most
advanced ever used in a consumer product. And the lasers were
still on the drawing board when the companies teamed up in 1979.
In 1980, researchers published what became known as the “Red
Book” containing the origina