On the 17th August 1982, the very first commercial compact disc was produced in the German town of Langenhagen. Although it was a number of months before the disc was actually available to purchase, the advent of the CD marked a seismic shift in the way people listened to music.
Having initially developed separate prototype digital audio discs, engineers at electronics giants Philips and Sony came together in 1979 to develop a standardised digital audio disc. Interestingly, this was happening while they sat on opposite sides of the VHS-Betamax war over home video formats.
In 1980 the engineers agreed on and published their ‘Red Book’ standard, which is still used – with some minor amendments – as the basis for all Compact Discs. Having agreed on the standard format, marketing could then begin. The first public demonstration was given on Tomorrow’s World, a BBC television program about new science and technology, in 1981 and saw presenter Kieran Prendiville smear strawberry jam on a CD of the Bee Gees’ album Living Eyes to demonstrate the supposedly indestructible nature of the new format.
A year later, the first CD was produced to be sold commercially. Chilean pianist Claudio Arrau’s recording of Chopin waltzes was pressed at Philips’ Polydor Pressing Operations plant, with the pianist himself starting the machine. Philips apparently believed that classical music fans were generally more affluent and therefore more likely to pay the hefty price tag for CDs and their players. However, the first ‘pop’ music CD to be produced was the The Visitors – the last album recorded by the Swedish super-group ABBA.
