video disc

video disc The first compact disc was producedDVD Ripper exactly 25 years ago in a factory in Germany after years of development by Philips and Sony. We take a look at the humble disc's history and how it shaped the music landscape.

The compact disc project was launched following Philips' failure with its video disc technology in 1978.

The video disc was one of the first commercial products to take advantage of laser technology that could read information from a disc without any physical contact.

Research into the video disc began as far back as 1969, and itself was inspired by Italian Antonio Rubbiani, who had demonstrated a rudimentary video disc system 12 years earlier.

In 1970 Philips began work on what was called the ALP (audio long play) - an audio disc system to rival vinyl records, but using laser technology.

Lou Ottens, technical director of the audio division at Philips, was the first to suggest that the ALP be made smaller than the dominant vinyl format and should aim for one hour of music.

The project initially flirted with the idea of quadraphonic sound but a disc with one hour of music had to be 20cm in diameter and so the plan was abandoned.

In 1977 Philips began to take the development of a new audio format much more seriously. A new name for the product was discussed and names considered included Mini Rack, MiniDisc, and Compact Rack.

The team settled on Compact Disc because it was felt it would remind people of the success of the Compact Cassette.

In March 1979 Philips conducted a press conference to show off the audio quality of its CD system in production and also to impress upon rivals how well DVD Ripperit was progressing.