The History of the CD-ROM

Gammu writes "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."

Comments

Original CD Players

[GizmoToy]

I remember my father bought one of the original Sony audio CD players. It was a CDP-102, the second version released in 1984. It looked quite a bit like the one in the article, but it was shorter and longer... the typical stereo component profile. That thing weighs a ton, and when you inserted the CD it had a clear window so you could watch the tray lower itself and the CD onto the motor. I thought that was the coolest thing.

Built like a tank, too. It was still in regular use until just recently, and still worked flawlessly without so much as a cleaning over 20 years later. They don't make them like that, anymore. Maybe it was better components, or simply nostalgia, but I thought it had a better sound quality that most CD players these days.

Inventor

[Anonymous Coward]

This article ignores the significant previous work by David Paul Gregg which led to the Laserdisc and the derivative CD tehcnology. I therefore dispute the validity of James Russell, because Gregg was the first one to put music digitally on a reflective disc to be read by laser. I attended a Laserdisc demonstration Gregg gave to Mensa members in Los Angeles sometime in the early 1970s at his home. Russell may have conceived of a technology, but Gregg was the first to actually implement a working means to digitally handle audio and music on a disc for mass consumption. He did a lot of work and should get proper credit. CDs came after his efforts.

An interesting guy...

[yroJJory]

I had the honor of meeting Mr. Russell in NYC during the Audio Engineering Society's conference in 2003. He was an interesting person to speak with and was very understated. He sat next to my fiancee on the shuttle bus returning from the conference to Times Square and it was only after chatting with him for 10 minutes or so that he revealed (after much prodding) that he was at the conference as part of the AES Historical section and that he felt like it was a waste of effort to be present. He said that nobody was interested in meeting him.

At that, my fiancee turned to me and my other friends, sitting behind them, and introduced us.

We chatted for the remainder of the bus ride and he told us a little of what the invention process was like and how he hadn't even made a dime from something that we noted had changed the world. (He wasn't bitter, BTW.)

I got his autograph (as did several others) and a short line formed. I still have the CD I had him sign.

It's nice to see him getting some recognition.

Bill Gates advocated CD-ROM very early

[ynotds]

Bill was in Sydney on the day he became a billionaire* and was surprised to find a bunch of locals wanting to hear more of his recently published thoughts on the then still prospective new medium, but was happy enough to participate in a breakfast discussion quickly arranged by his then Australian representative Linda Graham.

CD-ROM was arguably his last time Bill was close enough to the leading edge that others who made a living at that edge sought his opinion.

*M$ had listed overnight Australian time.

Missing items

[MavEtJu]

Honestly, the Wikipedia article gives a better background and has more information about related technologies (laserdisc for example).

Also, the famous Why has the compact disc 74 minutes of playtime is explained there:

According to a Sunday Tribune interview [1] the story is slightly more involved. At that time (1979) Philips owned Polygram, one of the world's largest distributors of music. Polygram had set up a large experimental CD plant in Hanover, Germany, which could produce huge amounts of CDs having, of course, a diameter of 115 mm. Sony did not yet have such a facility. If Sony had agreed on the 115 mm disc, Philips would have had a significant competitive edge in the market. Sony was aware of that, did not like it, and something had to be done. The long-playing time of Beethoven's Ninth imposed by Ohga was used to push Philips to accept 120 mm, so that Philips' Polygram lost its edge on disc fabrication.

Re:HD-DVD is dead

[superslacker87]

I have to say I'm honestly shocked. The way fickle America is, I would figure they would go "BluRay? What's that?" and then go "HD-DVD? Well, it has DVD in it, and I know HD has a better quality picture, and it is a DVD after all." I personally wasn't going to buy either until a. A good quality cheap BluRay/HD-DVD/DVD/VCD/CD player came out or b. Someone in this worthless battle of the new "awesome" formats actually won. I'm still going to hold out, but it looks like I'm going to eventually be getting a BluRay player for my home this Christmas, or next Christmas if it's still not solved.