The CD Turns 25 Years Old August 18, 2007

Read more Digital Audio , Entertainment , Hi-fi , Music , Technology

Philips has rolled out the nostalgia carpet with news that the humble CD is 25 years old. Apart from having to re-buy much of my collection to replace vinyl and tapes, I love CDs – even if they were in no way as indestructible as once claimed by manufacturers. "Scratch resistant", anyone? Here are some of the highlights:

- World’s first CD manufactured at Philips factory near Hanover, Germany, on August 17, 1982
- Co-developed with Sony, over 200 billion CDs sold in last 25 years
- The first CD to be manufactured at the plant was “The Visitors” by ABBA.
- Most of the first 150 CDs on the market by November 1982 [in Japan – nothing new there then] were classical
- CDs arrived in Europe in March 1983
- The original target storage capacity for a CD was one hour of audio content, and a disc diameter of 115mm was sufficient for this, however Sony and Philips extended the capacity to 74 minutes to accommodate a complete performance of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony.
- By the time CDs were introduced on the market in November 1982, a catalogue of around 150 titles – mainly classical music – had been produced.
- In 1985, Dire Straits, adopted the CD and the album “Brothers in Arms”, became the biggest selling CD then and the third biggest seller of the 1980s.

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