Just forget the words and sing along

Friday, August 17, 2007

Happy Anniversary, CDs!

First, big news about Transformers.

I think it's safe to assume we've all seen Transformers by now. But when you were watching it, were you thinking, "Hey! You know what would make this movie even better? If the giant robots were EVEN BIGGER!"

Well, you're getting your wish. On September 21, Transformers gets re-released in IMAX.

Anywho, on to the anniversary that I mention in the heading.

It was on this day - August 17 - back in 1982 that the very first compact discs rolled off the assembly line.

That makes today the 25th anniversary of the CD.

In case your curious, those first CDs contained a recording of classical music...a recording of Richard Strauss' Alpine Symphony.

Yeah, I'm geek enough to have read up on the CD's history. You know why they're 75 minutes long, instead of something easy to round off, like an hour? It's because most of the engineers who developed the CD were classical music enthusiasts, and they went, "Hey! If we could make these things 75 minutes long...they'd be big enough to hold entire pieces of classical music! We wouldn't have to cut them off and spread them over 2 discs!"

Another plan in the beginning was to make them as big as vinyl records...you know, cuz consumers were used to that size.

So, yeah. Celebrate by cranking up one of your favourite albums.

No comments: