Happy 40th Anniversary to The Compact Disc
The compact disc celebrates it’s 40th birthday today. . . it was produced in a factory in Germany. Now keep in mind that the very first commercially available CD was Billy Joel’s “52nd Street” and it was released in Japan that October. On the other hand, the very first music CD pressed here in America was pressed a couple of years later and it was Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.”!
If you think about it, 40 years ago doesn’t seem that long ago when we were all looking to buy a CD player so that we could actually play CD’s in the basement, in our room, much less in our car! Here’s another flashback…the 1987 Lincoln Town Car become the first vehicle to offer CD players out of the factory.
Luckily, the portable CD player came out a few years before that…the problem was being able to afford it. The world’s first portable CD player, if you remember, was called a “Discman”, which of course went on to be re-branded as the “Walkman” and that would cost you around $300 when it was introduced in November 1984.
In 1997 though, that’s when technology really hit and Sony came out with the “non-skip” CD player and people everywhere just had to have it! You could run, walk, or even ride a bike, listen to your favorite CD without the fear of it skipping!!!!
On the other hand, buying CD’s wasn’t that cheap either…it wasn’t until the 90’s that they became a little more affordable pricing at about $12-14 a disc! So look at your CD collection right now and do the math, no doubt you have thousands of dollars invested in CD’s!
So today, play your favorite CD on your Walkman, in your car or even at home and celebrate the 40th anniversary of the incredible Compact Disc…and enjoy!
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