-
James T. Russell is usually credited with being the inventor of the CD. He envisioned of a system that could record and replay sounds without any physical contact between parts.
-
-
Russell's patent were first filed, focusing on an optical transparent foil that was lit from behind by a high-power halogen lamp.
-
A joint task force of engineers were formed by Sony and Philips (known then as Royal Philips Electronics) after a meeting discussing its size, shape, and technology to design this new audio disc, pushing forward laser and optical disc technology in the process.
-
Philip had a press conference to show the accompanying system's audio quality and to impress its rivals on how well their new product was progressing.
-
Philips and Sony produce and release their Red Book, laying down all the standards for their CDs.
-
The first public demonstration of this product was on the BBC show "Tomorrow's World," when the Bee Gees album "Living Eyes" was played.
-
The first commercial compact disc was produced, which was the 1981 ABBA album "The Visitors."
-
The CD was officially launched in Japan with the first 50 titles released over there.
-
Kees Immink and Joseph Braat presented the first experiments with erasable compact discs
-
CDs and their accompanying players were officially released in Europe and North America (where CBS Records released 16 titles).
-
The inventor of the CD, James T. Russell, has now earned 26 patents for the CD-ROM technology
-
The 1985 Dire Straits album "Brothers in Arms" was the first to sell over a million CDs, thus proving the product's increasing commercial viability.
-
400 million CDs were now manufactured by 50 pressing plants around the world.
-
Sony and Philips officially release the computer-readable CD-ROM, which was an extension of the earlier CD-DA (Compact Disc Digital Audio), and adapted the format to hold any form of digital data.
-
Sony and Philips introduced the CD-Recordable, which were a new alternative to tape for recording music and copying music albums without defects found in compression used in other digital recording methods.
-
Philips releases the CD-i, which is an interactive multimedia compact disc created to provide more functionality than an audio CD player or game console, but at a lower price than a personal computer with a CD-ROM drive.
-
This time designed by Kodak, this is a system designed for digitizing and storing photos on a CD.
-
The standard for VCDs (Compact Disc Digital video) was created by Sony Philips, JVC, and Matsushita. It is a digital format for storing video media on a CD.
-
Sony and Philips developed and introduced the SACD, which is a high-resolution read-only audio disc that was to provide higher fidelity digital audio reproduction than that of the regular CD.
-
CD sales have reached an all-time high of $13 million in revenue.
-
Around 80% of music sales in 2012 consists of both CDs and DVDs, proving the former's strong presence in music distribution in the "Land of the Rising Sun."
-
24% of music in the U.S. was purchased on physical media, with two-thirds of it consisting of CDs.
