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Edited on Thu Jun-21-07 04:34 PM by Neo
It All Started With ABBA
25 Years Ago the Album “the Visitors” Was the World’s First CD Made from Makrolon
Philips and Bayer revolutionized data storage / The future lies in holography
It is small and round, provides enjoyable, crackle-free, crystal-clear sound, and it set off an acoustic revolution 25 years ago: the first pop CD to be made from Bayer’s high-tech material Makrolon® was ABBA’s album “The Visitors” in 1982. The compact disc produced the songs of the Swedish cult band in a sound quality that was totally new at the time, so that this shiny object totally changed the international music industry. It also changed the way people listened to music – forever. What is more, it heralded the global conquest of optical data storage. For the last quarter of a century the basic material for the storage of digital data on CDs and the like has been the high-tech plastic Makrolon from Bayer. Working together with Philips and PolyGram, Bayer developed compact disc technology in the early eighties.
Herbert von Karajan sets the tone
“What, you mean you can turn them over and then play the other side?!” says junior with amazement as dad nostalgically gets out the old record player to listen to one of those vinyls. Should be put in a museum. But before the soot-blackened vinyl material was replaced by the crystal-clear Makrolon and started a digital revolution in music, the “industry giants” first had to agree on common standards for CDs. How many minutes of recording time and thus storage capacity should the new medium have? What should its diameter be? We might think it was clearly a job for engineers to decide, but it wasn’t. We owe the final decision to Herbert von Karajan, the star conductor and classical music genius. Having correctly understood the digital opportunities of the compact disc at this early stage, von Karajan showed an amazing amount of foresight. He realized that it might be possible to store his music and therefore his life’s work for all eternity, and so he clearly defined the parameters for this new sound medium by insisting that it should have enough capacity to store his favorite piece, Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. The maestro had spoken. Michael Lang, CEO of Deutsche Grammophon, commented: “So you see from this example how classical music actually did influence the birth of the compact disc. But of course, classical music benefited greatly from the compact disc with its brilliant sound, ease of handling, ease of storage, no scrapes, no warps. And perhaps for maestro Karajan one of the benefits was not having to get up and turn the LP over every 15 minutes.”
Other sources say that it was the wife of the former Sony Chairman, Ako Morita, who decided on today’s storage capacity. One thing is certain now: a CD has a diameter of 12 centimeters and provides enough space for 74 minutes of musical pleasure. When it came to the circular hole in the middle, it was the Dutch who made the final decision. The 15-millimeter diameter of a CD, which we now take for granted, was exactly the size of the smallest coin in the world at the time: a Dutch ten-cent piece.
Half way through this illustrious time period you'd have difficult time finding vinyl in music stores. Now you would have a hard time finding a music store period.
Incidently just last weekend I went to a local shop and bough 8 vinyl records and two CDs. I try to get SACDs when they're available.
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