I’d like to take a moment to wish our good friend the compact disc a happy birthday. Sadly, its birthday was actually the 8th, but I sent it some flowers, so hopefully it will forgive me.
Last Friday, the IEEE (once an acronym for the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc., but now it’s just IEEE) granted Royal Philips Electronics an IEEE Milestone Award for contributing to the creation of the CD. Yesterday was the 30th anniversary of the first demonstration of the CD prototype, which was codenamed “Pinkeltje.” Frankly, I’m glad they ditched that name in favor of “compact disc.”
Since Sony and Philips launched CD players in 1982, more than 3.5 billion CD audio players have been sold, as well as another 3 billion CD-ROM drives and 240 billion compact discs themselves.