The CD Turns 25 Today

netbuzz writes "Seems like only yesterday to those of us of a certain age, but the CD turns 25 today. Philips, maker of the first CD on Aug. 17, 1982, estimates that more than 200 billion have been sold since. The younger set might have trouble appreciating the difference in auditory quality that the compact disc represented over vinyl or cassette tapes (some have probably never even seen a record). And all but true trivia buffs will have trouble coming up with the name of the artist on that first disc."

Happy Birthday!

[Kranfer]

Happy Birthday Compact Disc! Now wheres my isolinear optical chip I was promised by Star Trek?!?!?!

Re:Happy Birthday!

[Hoi Polloi]

I'm still waiting for my dilithium crystal powered car.

What a sad begining...

[bbernard]

I can't believe the artist that was first recorded on CD. What, were the Bee Gees unavailable? And now I've got one of their damn songs going through my head. Damn you first CD trivia!

Re:cue the...

[Quiet_Desperation]

Cue the vinyl fanatics who will whine about how "warm" their vinyls sound

Don't worry. I think I've managed to kill tham all.

Re:sad

[Rob T Firefly]

Haha!! I remember in the 1980s older relatives giving me "Pac Man tapes" for my Atari. (No matter what game it was, they still called it a "Pac Man tape," as in "Here's the Pac Man tape of 'Pitfall' you wanted!" Later I would collect "Nintendo tapes" for my NES.

Nowadays my mom still calls DVDs "CDs." Baby steps..

Re:The First Discs Were Not ABBA

[Bazman]

ABBA (whats the Unicode for a backwards 'B'?) were just first in alphabetical order, because popular beat combo Aaron's Aardvarks hadn't formed yet. And still haven't.

Re:What a sad begining...

[abbamouse]

You go to hell! You go to hell and die! How dare thee besmirch the names of Agnetha, Benny, Bjorn, and Anni-Frid!

So sayeth the ABBA mouse. So shall it be done.

200 Billion?

[shogarth]

Anyone care to guess how many of these wre AOL coasters?

Re:The First Discs Were Not ABBA

[halcyon1234]

1st cd microwaved: AOL [youtube.com]

Re:The First Discs Were Not ABBA

[TobyRush]

My first disc was Squeeze's Babylon and On, and the thing that first amazed me was not the sound quality but how soon you heard the music after pressing "play"... no tape leader to wait through.

Also, the first time I opened that Squeeze jewel case, the CD was rotated exactly correctly (so the text on the CD was oriented the right way) and thus, ever since, my slightly OCD self has always put CDs back in their jewel cases right side up. My wife gives me heck for this, and often threatens to go downstairs and start randomly rotating CDs when she wants to get under my skin.

All you players and posers never owned an 8 track!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm 40 and I owned a record player, an 8-track, and a tape player. I didn't even buy a CD player until around 1990. SO BFD to all the wannabees out there who think they're cool just because they've seen a record. I've walked through the 8-track jungle, baby.

Re:The 74-minute story

[cellocgw]

Speaking of varying the length of a piece, is that John Cage organ piece still going on in?
IIRC the composer wrote "as slow as possible," so some gang of fools come in and move a couple sandbags every few days (onto different organ keys), and the piece will finish on the 100th anniversary of Cage's birth or some such.
like at this story [bbc.co.uk]

Re:CD vs. vinyl audio quality

[Tim Browse]

Vinyl stores more information than CDs do. Quite a bit more.

Oh really?

Of course. This is trivially provable - vinyl has to store all the extra information about where the scratchs, pops, crackles and worn-out grooves are. You don't get that information on CDs!