CD is 25 Years Old Today

Exactly 25 years ago today, the CD was born. Royal Philips Electronics manufactured the world's first compact disc at a Philips factory in Langenhagen, just outside of Hanover, Germany. Who knew at the time how universal and ubiquitous the CD would become. And that it would lead to the development of basically all subsequent optical disc formats. The data on optical discs are read with light instead of magnetically, like a hard drive.
But did you know there was an earlier optical disc? An optical videodisc was developed in 1958, before the term "laser" was even coined. This led to the development of the Laserdisc which was demonstrated in 1972 but not released to the public until 1978; two years after the VCR debuted and four years before the CD.
Never heard of it? Not surprising, given that due to expense and marketing, only about 1 million players were ever sold in the US; thats about 1% of households having Laserdisc at it's peak. Even so, Laserdisc offered superior audio/video quality at the time and definitely led to the development of the CD.
read more | digg story