Happy birthday to the CD: 25 years old today

Exactly 25 years ago today — August 17th, 1982 — Philips manufactured the first compact disc, at their factory near Hanover, Germany.

Co-developed by Philips and Sony, over 200 billion CDs have been sold in that time.

The first CD to be manufactured at the plant was “The Visitors” by ABBA, though the initial catalogue of CDs launched in November 1982 were mainly classical music recordings.

Unsurprisingly, Japan were first to see CD players and discs, with European and US consumers getting hold of the technology in March 1983.

Design talks between Philips and Sony began in 1979, when the size and capacity of the disc was decided. Initially, the target storage capacity for a CD was one hour’s worth of music, but this was extended to 74 minutes in order to accommodate a complete performance of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony.

In 1985, Philips teamed up with rock band Dire Straits to heavily promote the compact disc. “Brothers In Arms” was one of the first fully-digital (DDD) recordings.

Useless fact: Though a single CD is only 1.2mm thick, if all CDs ever produced were piled up, the stack would circle the earth six times.

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