[opendtv] Re: The CD turns 25

  • From: Jeroen Stessen <jeroen.stessen@xxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Fri, 17 Aug 2007 12:53:07 +0200

Hi, 

Ciril Kosorok wrote: 
> The CD turns 25

Thanks for the tip, you proud ex-Philips man ! 

I was thinking: I am sitting in building WY now, and this may well be
the exact place where the CD was conceived ?! Makes me kinda proud. 

Another anecdote is that the size of the hole in the disk was taken 
from the Dutch 10 cents coin ("dubbeltje"), which was 14 mm diameter. 

I think that the first ("CD-100") players were shown during the 1982 
Firato show, which was held in the summer of every even year. 
But it wasn't until March 1983 that CDs and players became availabe 
for sale in Europe. We had such great expectations of the resistance 
to dirt and scratches... Now we know better. Whenever the DVD player 
stalls, my 3 yr old son comes running with a lens tissue to clean the 
disk, usually from his own dirty fingerprints. 
(He even offered one when the satellite signal was lost, haha.) 

Isn't it weird that in those days nobody has ever considered dual 
sided and/or dual layer disks, different formats, different colors of 
lasers ? This may have been the last time that a true world standard 
was set, and one that is still very much alive after 25 years ! 

Of course the bad news is that all the CD patents have expired.  :-( 

Best, 
-- Jeroen

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