Happy 25th, Compact Disc

It was 25 years ago today that the first compact discs rolled off of a production line in Germany, bringing ABBA's The Visitors to the world in 44.1-kHz digital sound.

With today's plethora of high-definition DVDs, it seems almost quaint to remember how excited we were by the thought of this new, shiny 5'' disc that promised to revolutionize the way we listened to music. Not only was the sound supposed to be crisper and clearer, the discs were smaller, easier to handle, and more resilient than the vinyl discs they were intended to replace. Though there have always been audiophiles who were less than satisfied with CD audio quality and vinyl has never really gone away, CDs have for the most part lived up to their hype. Furthermore, they changed the way we listened to music -- those of us who weren't too keen on "Mother" could just program the song out of existence whenever we popped Synchronicity into the tray. And more adventurous souls could hit shuffle on their favorite album just to see where serendipity would take them.

For my money, the really big deal about CDs was their multifarious character: for the first time, the same medium could be used for music, video or data, without necessarily using a computer. The possibilities inherent in that idea fired the imagination of programmers, corporations and artists. (More than a few technology writers -- yours truly included -- were also excited, and in those heady days a number of us envisioned CDs as the killer communication medium of the future... while failing to notice that we were filing our stories via a little thing called e-mail.)

For all that, we tend to think of music as the CD's killer app, and in that regard the format has fallen on hard times, as portable audio players and downloadable music have caught on. But it's worth noting that the CD is still going strong as a recording medium. It's not uncommon for everyday people to burn mix CDs or personalized photo albums without a second thought, and CD recorders are standard issue on any computer you buy these days.

More than anything else, the compact disc has led to other, more versatile formats. The compact disc's direct descendant, the DVD, turned ten this year, and is the most widely (and rapidly) adopted consumer media format ever. And while the CD's various grandchildren -- SACD, DVD-Audio, HD DVD and Blu-ray -- don't necessarily get along, I'm sure the CD would beam contentedly from the rocking chair on the front porch, if such a thing were possible.