Disco down in history

Is where you were born important to you? Does it really matter where you're from? Or is it enough to be simply a "citizen of the world"? Why shouldn't these same questions apply to a business? Whilst investigating our roots, we found out some interesting facts that even we didn't know...

Question 1: What was the first audio title produced on CD and when did it go on sale?
Answer: ABBA's 'The Visitors' released in 1982.

Up until this point, the discs most people were familiar with had been made of vinyl. The Abba CD was a pathfinder, the first disc to use the brand new format of CD. The members of ABBA and their personnel have memories of the recording sessions for this album being rather difficult. To begin with, their sound engineer Michale Tretow had to become accustomed to using the new 32-track digital recorder. He said, "Digital recording cut out all the hiss, but it also meant that sounds were sharply cut off below a certain level. The sound simply became too clean, so I had to find ways of compensating for that." But all their hard work certainly paid off and Music Melody were quoted as saying "Music like this is a juke box dream, golden sparkle and inspiration that's instantly singable yet lasts a virtual lifetime".

Since then, more than 200 billion CDs have been sold throughout the world and the CD, along with it's larger capacity product family of DVD and Blu-ray, have become the world's most widely used method to store, transfer and play large quantities of data, images or music. The format continues to dominate with 36 billion units manufactured worldwide in 2008.

Question 2: Who invented the CD - Sony or Philips ?
Answer: Neither.

You may have joined me in thinking it was one or the other of these mighty corporations, but the actual answer is James T Russell. This name may be unfamiliar to most people, but back in 1965 he joined Battelle Laboratories of America. As a music lover he knew that each time he listened to a vinyl record, the friction from the needle degraded the recording material. Russell, a qualified engineer, knew the solution was to create a recording device that would never touch the playing surface and at the same time deliver great quality that would last and last. From a technological perspective he was successful and patented the first optical recording playback system in 1970. In spite of adding another 25 patents for himself and Battelle over the next 12 years the invention hardly progressed and they were unable to convince the market to listen to the possibilities offered by this new compact disc product.

A venture capitalist, Eli S Jacobs was intrigued and formed a company called Digital Recording Corporation (DRC) which continued to fund Battelle's research and development and also, during that time adapted the technology to store and play video images. It was not until Philips and Sony got involved that credibility was added and an industry standard established around Russells CD format that extended the technology into the computer storage industry. Today the disc is in common use throughout our lives; not only in the home, but also whilst traveling and at work.

Submitted by Clive Wilkinson, with reference sources from IMD, Business Life and Wikipedia.