Basic CD History

Once upon a time (mid 70's), there was a company in Europe named Phillips that invented the optical disc and changed the way we live. When  you consider the billions and billions of discs that have been made since then and the evolution to DVD and now BluRay you must wonder what we would have done without this technology.

The original optical discs were about the size of an old vinyl LP but quickly evolved to the compact disc or CD. All manufacturing was done via injection molding until the mid 80's when a Japanese company, Taiyo Yuden, came up with the concept of using dyes and burning the data on demand. This was initially a very expensive process but by the turn of the century became affordable and common in desktop computers.

Today the CD is still the media of choice for many industries. Musicians rely on this media because it is universally playable on all disc players and remains the easiest tangible method of selling their music at live venues or brick and mortar stores. Other popular uses include software, marketing pieces, audio books, data records.

The CD is also the absolute best portable media for archiving purposes. 300 year archive ratings are possible when the disc is made with 24K gold, a number that is far beyond anything else. It should be noted here that DVD media is available with 100 year ratings when made with gold.