At one time, the appearance of the first laser discs was like a revolution. It really was a real revolution in the field of storage devices . The appearance of the first laser discs conditionally divided the stages of the development of computer technology into “before” and “after” compact discs.
Why was this so important? For example, now there are Blu-Ray drives, external flash drives or magnetic recordings on sale, however, no one is talking about any shocks. The thing is that at present there is a natural evolutionary development of technology. Most users are completely indifferent to how much of the hard drive in the home computer is 2 or 3 Terabytes, because there are no programs that require such a large amount. A collection of mp3 files or even movies can be safely stored in some folder on the disk: anyway, free space is enough for everything. Once again we make a reservation - this is relevant for the average user.
The situation was completely different when the first laser discs appeared. At that time, the main storage media were hard drives (hard drives) and flexible magnetic diskettes. A magnetic floppy disk drive could hold up to 1.44 MB of data. Of course, there were improved models with a capacity of up to 2.88 MB and alternative solutions with a similar recording principle - Iomega Zip and Jazz (up to 750 MB by the time the standard went down), however, due to the high cost of the drives and the media themselves, they did not get enough distribution. The size of the programs increased, so no one was surprised if you had to use not one, but several disks at once to transfer data. Moreover, the capacity of the hard drives was already not enough, as there were more and more programs that I wanted to save. The industry froze in anticipation of something new that could solve these issues.
At the same time, tapes still reigned in the field of audio recordings. Everyone is familiar with their shortcomings: it is the need to adjust the read head; selection of a magnetic coating (chrome, iron); periodic cleaning of the broaching mechanism; inconvenience of transportation and storage (magnetic fields could damage the recording). The appearance of the first laser discs successfully solved all these problems: in computer technology it became possible to store and transfer large volumes (650 - 900 MB) of data from a computer to a computer, and the recording world received at its disposal a universal medium devoid of drawbacks and exceeding them in quality sounding.
It is still impossible to say with certainty who is actually the inventor of CDs. It is generally accepted that in 1979 they were developed by two large companies - Philips and Sony. Three years later, mass production of disks and related reading devices was established. At the same time, one can sometimes find the claim that the CD was invented by physicist D. Russell in 1971 as an alternative to his scratch-prone vinyl collection.
Here are some interesting facts about CDs:
- The disc size of 12 cm was not chosen by chance. Sony engineers thought that 100 mm was enough, as this made the reader more compact. Philips was of the opinion that the size should be equal to the diagonal of the audio cassette (115 mm).
- As vice president of Sony, Norio Oga believed that the disc should fully accommodate Beethoven’s ninth symphony (74 minutes of sound), which translated into digital data yielded 650 MB.
- In 1980, companies finally approved the size of the compact disc, which is 12 cm.
- Since 2000, 700 MB (80 minutes) of the species almost completely replaced its 650 MB counterparts. Soon 800 and even 900 MB disks appeared, but they did not receive mass distribution.