The notion of disk can refer to a circular sheet that records information. Depending on their characteristics, there are multiple types of discs. A compact disc is a digitally recorded optical disc capable of holding a large amount of data.
To understand what a compact disc is, therefore, we first have to know that an optical disc is a disc on which data is recorded and read using laser rays . A compact disc, also known as a compact disc or CD , is specifically a digitally recorded optical disc.
The compact discs have a thickness of 1.2 millimeters and a diameter of 12 centimeters. These objects can contain documents , photographs , videos , audios and other types of files. Its capacity is 700 MB of data or 80 minutes of audio.
Originally, compact discs were used for audio storage and distribution . The artists, in this way, recorded their songs and marketed them on these records, as they previously did on cassettes and further back in time , on vinyl records .
Over the years, compact discs capable of storing other digital data emerged, and even the possibility of burning CDs with almost any computer became widespread. In this way, people started saving office documents, photos, videos and other data on compact discs.
Among the main curiosities of the compact disc we can highlight some as interesting as the following:
-The origin of the compact disc is considered to be in the 1960s and, specifically, in the figure of James T. Russell, who was an American inventor who was a great music lover. However, there are those who establish that its creator was the Dutchman Kees Schouhamer and that the great boost to this format came from the joint work of Philips and Sony.
-The first record that managed to sell a whopping one million copies in the compact disc format was “Brother in Arms”, by the famous band Dire Straits. This happened in 1985, the year in which the artist who decided to publish his entire catalog on CD was David Bowie.
-A compact disc allows you to store 200% more information than a vinyl record, for example. Specifically, it is estimated that it can offer storage of approximately 300,000 pages of text.
-One of the greatest defenders of this format was the prestigious conductor Herbert Von Karajan.
-Several layers are what give shape to a compact disc: the first, which is made of polycarbonate; the second, which is made of pulverized material; The third is made up of a transparent varnish and two more layers in which the information is actually stored.
Nowadays, due to the rise of cloud computing , streaming and USB drives , the compact disc has lost popularity.