17 August, 2007

Happy birthday, CD

It feels like an urban myth, but the BBC reports that the reason a standard audio CD has a running time of 74 minutes is that the technology was deliberately designed to accommodate a complete performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.

Twenty-five years old today. That's based on the production of the first discs, then of extreme minority-interest, rather than being the anniversary of CDs being more widespread, but still, it doesn't feel as if they've existed for anything like as long. Then again, I clearly remember a time before Walkmans and VHS recorders, too.

I don't recall buying my first CD, but it would have been well into the Nineties; I think it'd have been somewhere around 1994, as I know I have cassette tapes released in 1993.