The CD is 30 Years Old Today

Saw this in today's paper, thought it was interesting... The Compact Disc is 30 years old today. The first commercially available CDs went on sale (in Germany, apparently) on this date in 1982.

A Look Back: Mass production, sale of CDs began in 1982

It's fast becoming a way of dating oneself to mentione that one remembers the use of CDs. But when the term "compact disc" was first used in the '70s to refer to prototypes developed by Philips and Sony, it had massive potential. By 1981's Sony's CD products were being displayed at industry shows.

On August 17, 1982, mass production of CDs began. The first commercial CD released was Billy Joel's "52nd Street." The format remained the dominant storage device until the turn of this century.

Ya know, I never knew that. I remember CDs becoming the in thing where I'm from in the early 90s or so.

I saw a CD player for the first time in a store (Sears) in '83, maybe early '84... it was a big boxy one kinda like the one in the photo above... if memory serves the price was something like $600 and of course, the only discs available at the time were for mega-stars like Billy Joel, Madonna, Bruce Springsteen, Elton John, etc.

I distinctly remember my brother and I looking briefly at the store display, seeing how expensive it was, and saying "Pffft, forget it. These things will never catch on." and then we probably bought some cassette tapes.

I've seen pictures of that Sony one on Audio forums. It has a cool flip out door like a cassette. I also learned that a lot of the Philips cd players were branded as Magnavox in the US.

Phillips:


Magnavox:


I still have the first cd player I bought:

A Sony CDP-C20 that still works, but has a bit of a rumble when it changes discs.

I got my first CD player in 1987.