Happy 25th Birthday, compact disc!

[Shrygue]

via Engadget


Has it really been a quarter-century since the first compact disc was pressed, finally freeing us from the infernal routine of rewinding our mix tapes? Well sure enough, Philips was kind enough to inform us that its very first CD rolled off the production lines on August 17th, 1982, which history will forever remember -- perhaps unfortunately -- as a copy of ABBA's The Visitors. Nonetheless, this first widely-produced optical disc format would end up changing our lives forever, ushering in the era of lossless copies, easy music sharing, and an unwanted little friend we've come to know as DRM.

Now with some 200 billion discs having been sold worldwide -- and probably twice as many distributed gratis by AOL in its dial-up heyday -- it would seem that the original shiny little platter is unquestionably in its golden years, with more convenient or capacious formats replacing it on almost every front. So Philips, the readers and editors of Engadget are proud to join you in saluting the revolutionary product you helped pioneer -- and also offer our condolences that things, um, haven't worked out quite so well for you in the transition to MP3.

[acn010]

happy birthday.... i was not born that time.... but i saw the first cd players XD

[VampDude]

CD's have since evolved greatly in the past 25 years, who would've know back then that games consoles would eventually go on to adopt the CD format and become one of the main selling points of the PSone due to cheaper games. And who would've known then that the CD size they used then was what we now consider the smallest and basic of media for audio, and that sizes of discs grew from megabytes to gigabytes and that we now have movies on CD's (DVD's) which are available to everyone. Oh and Blue-Ray/HD-DVD etc (technology after DVD's), an invention of 25 years ago (CD - to avoid confusion) has gone a long way!

[mcdougall57]

my first computer had a speed x1 cd player lol but i think it will live on for a long time to come through the audio format, i even think it will outlive dvd

[gdf]

i prefer having physical copies than just mp3s. 'mon the cd!

also vamp i thought you had good grammar. why the gross misuse of apostrophies? WHY!?!?!?!?!

[acn010]

lol
and i heard that the laser was a gift of technology from aliens!!! lmao!

[gdf]

i heard that you were a crazy mofo. how could it be aliens? it was sammy the seagull!

but yeah cds pwn.

[acn010]

guys... did you ever heard of golden cd's and dvd's????

[JKKDARK]

wow that's a lot of years. Happy birthday!

[bah]

The data on a cd-r is stored in the foil thats stuck to the top of the disc (along with some protective/reflective layers). Its basically a bit of plastic, then a layer than can go from transparent to opaque when the burning laser hits it, then a reflective layer and some protective ones.

If the laser burns a spot, then when read back the reflective layer cannot be seen in that spot.

The plastic just makes the thing rigid, the laser focuses right through it.