5 July 2007
History of the Compact Disc
Posted by Mikhail Esteves under: General .
The inventor of the compact disc, the most popular medium in the world for playing back and storing music, is often disputed as one individual did not invent every part of the compact disc. The most attributed inventor is James Russell, who in 1965 was inspired with a revolutionary idea as he sketched on paper a more ideal music recording system to replace vinyl records; Russell envisioned a system which could record and replay sounds without any physical contact between parts. By the time his invention had been refined and further developed, it was actually a merger and adaptation of many different technologies including the laser (1960), digital recording (1967) and optical disc technology (1970s). Russell struggled to attract interest from investors at first but eventually Sony and other companies realized the potential and purchased licenses of the CD-ROM technology.
With support from large corporations, the technology was further improved and enhanced to ensure it was ready for the market. In 1978, Polygram, a division of Philips, decided polycarbonate as the material of choice for the CD. Many other decisions were made that year, such as the disc diameter (115m) and the type of laser to be used by CD players. It was also decided that data on a CD would start at the center and spiral outwards to the edge. In 1979, a prototype CD system was demonstrated in Europe and Japan; Sony then agreed to join into the collaboration and both Sony and Philips compromised on the standard sampling rate of 44.1 kHz, and the choice to use 16-bit audio. The disc diameter was changed from 115m to 120mm to allow for 74 minutes of playback with the sampling rate and quality chosen.
