Tomorrow will the be the day exactly 25 years ago, on August 17, 1982, when Royal Philips Electronics manufactured the world's first compact disc (CD) at a Philips factory in Langenhagen, just outside of Hanover, Germany. The factory belonged to Polygram - the recording company which Philips owned at the time - and the first CD to be manufactured was "The Visitors" by ABBA. The first CDs and CD players - including Philips' CD100 - were introduced in Japan in November, followed by a US and European market introduction in March of 1983.
Philips and Sony originally partnered to develop the CD, setting up a joint engineering task force as early as 1979. The original target storage capacity for a CD was one hour of audio content, and a disc diameter of 115 mm was sufficient for this; however both parties extended the capacity to 74 minutes to accommodate a complete performance of Beethoven's 9th Symphony. In June 1980, the new standard was proposed by Philips and Sony as the "Red Book" containing all the technical specification for all CD and CD-Rom standards. In the 25 years since the CD was first introduced, over 200 billion have been sold worldwide, enough to circle the earth six times when stacked together.
From here at Neowin, we salute you, Mr. CD!
News source: Press Release at eCoustics
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