The Future of Recorded Music - Part 5 Page 2

1948-1979

0607_futuremusic_1948Columbia Records introduces the vinyl, 331/3-speed, Long Playing (LP) "microgroove" record. (Even now, the word "microgroove" gives us tingles.)

0607_futuremusic_1958The laser is invented, paving the way for the scene in 1964's Goldfinger where James Bond nearly gets his privates zapped.

0607_futuremusic_1967Japan's NHK Technical Research Institute demos a 12-bit Pulse Code Modulation (PCM) digital machine that records audio onto videotape at a sampling rate of 30 kHz (30,000 times per second). In 1969, Sony ups the ante to 13 bits at 47.25 kHz.

0607_futuremusic_1969Dutch physicist Klass Compaan comes up with the idea for the CD. Ironically, his name actually means "Compact Disc" in Dutch. (Hah! Just messin' with ya.)

0607_futuremusic_1970Compaan teams with Philips Electronics to produce a glass CD prototype. No doubt, it quickly gets scratched and starts skipping.

0607_futuremusic_1970Another inventor - American physicist James T. Russell - comes up with a CD concept. Sony will eventually license Russell's technology.

0607_futuremusic_1972MCA and Philips introduce DiscoVision - a dual-sided, LP-size, analog videodisc read by a laser. The format is called LaserVision by the time it hits the market in 1978.

0607_futuremusic_1979A CD prototype is demo'ed in Europe and Japan. Philips and Sony create the format's standard: 16-bit audio at a 44.1-kHz sampling rate on a 120mm-diameter disc that's read by a laser and holds up to 74 minutes of music. (Why 74? So all of Beethoven's Ninth can fit on one disc.)

The 1980s

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