The appearance of the first laser discs

At one time, the appearance of the first laser discs was like a revolution. It really was a real revolution in the field of storage devices . The appearance of the first laser discs conditionally divided the development stages of computer technology into "before" and "after" CDs.

Why was it so important? For example, now on sale there are Blu-Ray drives, external storage devices based on flash memory or magnetic recording, however, no one talks about any shocks. The thing is that at present natural evolutionary development of technologies takes place. Most users do not care about the amount of hard disk in the home computer - 2 or 3 terabytes, because there are no such programs that require so much volume. The collection of mp3 files or even movies can be safely stored in any folder on the disk: there is still enough free space for everything. Once again make a reservation - this is relevant for the average user.

The situation was completely different when the first laser disks appeared. At that time the main storage media were hard disks (hard disks) and flexible magnetic diskettes. The data storage device based on the magnetic floppy disk could accommodate up to 1.44 MB of data. Of course, there were advanced models with a capacity of up to 2.88 MB and alternative solutions with a similar recording principle - Iomega Zip and Jazz (up to 750 MB by the time of sunset), however, due to the high cost of drives and the media themselves, they were not sufficiently distributed. The size of the programs increased, so it did not surprise anyone if you had to use several diskettes to transfer data. Moreover, the capacity of hard drives was not enough, as there appeared more and more programs that I wanted to keep. The industry froze in anticipation of something new, capable of solving these issues.

At the same time, cassettes still reigned in the field of audio recordings. All of them are familiar with their shortcomings: it is the need to adjust the reading head; Selection of magnetic coating (chrome, iron); Periodic cleaning of the pull mechanism; Inconvenience of transportation and storage (magnetic fields could damage the record). The emergence of the first laser discs successfully solved all these problems: it became possible to store and transfer large amounts (650-900 Mb) of data from a computer to a computer, and the world of sound recording received a universal medium that lacks cassette defects and surpasses them in quality Sound.

Until now, it is impossible to say with certainty who actually is the inventor of CDs. It is widely recognized that in 1979 they were developed by two major companies - Philips and Sony. In three years mass production of disks and corresponding devices for reading was established. At the same time, it can sometimes be found that the compact disc was invented by the physicist D. Russell in 1971 as an alternative to his collection of vinyl records, prone to scratching.

Here are some interesting facts related to CDs:

- The size of the disc in 12 cm was chosen not accidentally. Sony engineers believed that 100 mm is enough, since it made the reader more compact. In Philips, it was believed that the size should be equal to the diagonal of the audio cassette (115 mm).

- As vice-president of Sony, Norio Oga believed that the disc should fully accommodate Beethoven's ninth symphony (74 minutes of sound), which translated into digital data gave 650 MB.

- In 1980, the company finally approved the size of the CD-ROM, which is 12 cm.

- Since 2000, 700 MB (80 minutes) versions have almost completely supplanted their 650 MB brothers. Soon there were 800 or even 900 MB disks, but they did not get mass distribution.