DIGITAL FORMAT
NOVEMBER 3, 2021
The Invention Of Compact Disc
Invention of compact disc that revolutionized the way people stored data in 1980’s was one of the greatest moments in history.
The Compact Disc (CD) is a digital optical disc data storage format. The new format was co developed by Philips and Sony and finalized in 1980 when the two companies created the “Red Book” standard. The documents set the standard of CD that outlined a 120 mm diameter disc containing a music at a resolution of 16 bit/44.1 kHz. It was then released in October 1982 and branded as Digital Audio Compact Disc.
Compact Disc format changed the way people listened to music in 1980’s. The inventor of CD is most often attributed to James Russel, an American physicist in the late 1960’s. The first commercial compact disc was produced on August 17, 1982 contains a recording from 1979 of Claudio Arrau performing Chopin waltzes. Then the first popular music CD was ‘The Visitors” (1981) by Swedish pop group, ABBA.
The advantage of optical media like CD and DVD is that they do not wear out from repeated use. They can only degrade over time when the recording layers are exposed to UV (Ultra Violet) rays in a long period of time. This happens because the layers are made with a dye that is very photosensitive.
Biggest enemy of optical disc is extreme temperatures. Direct sunlight may overheat the discs or damage the data layer with UV rays as well as ambient heat.
When first introduced, technology in compact disc was so advanced that some people need to adapt to the new behavior of this format. The data is stored on a circular data storage device that uses the optical laser technology. A beam of laser light is emitted onto the reflective surface of the disc to read and write the information when the compact disc rotates on the player.
The data inside a compact disc can be everything, from audio, video to computer software. Data is stored on the disc as a series of microscopic indentations with the non-indented spaces between them. Reproduction of recorded sound and other information is digitally processed inside the CD player.
At the time, the popularity of CD was so high that by 1988, 5 years after its US release, CD sales had passed vinyl and overtake the cassette format three years later in 1991. On the 25th anniversary of its release, around 200 billion CDs had been sold worldwide.
From technical standpoint, the quality of digital CD audio is clearly better than to vinyl. A better signal-to-noise-ratio, better stereo separation and constant playback speed. The first CD player from Sony is CDP -101, released on October 1, 1982 in Japan and six months later in the United States.
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