[Vintage-Audio] Re Birth Of The Compact Disc

[Gerry Steffens]

On October 1, 1982 Sony introduced the CDP-101, the first compact disc audio
CD player on the market at a retail price of about $900.


The first CD:

In the spring of 1981, Herbert von Karajan, conductor of the Berlin
Philharmonic orchestra, was one of the first outsiders to be allowed to
listen to the CD at Philips.  

He instantly fell in love with the quality of the new medium. In April of
that year, during the Salzburger Festspiele, Von Karajan decided to play the
new sound at a press conference. "This is a technological advance that is
comparable with the changeover from gas lamps to electric light," he told
his audience. 

Von Karajan’s enthusiasm was however not sufficient to win over the record
companies for the new medium. PolyGram, a Philips subsidiary, only changed
its track when Jan Timmer (later president of Philips) took over the helm.
He announced a 500-day program to develop CD presses and to take the market
by storm one and a half years later with half a million CDs.  

Very precise equipment is required for the production of a CD. It starts
with the production of one CD, the master. A powerful laser writes the
information on a light-sensitive layer. The parts exposed to laser light are
etched away, thus giving rise to the pit pattern. This positive master is
used to make a negative die from nickel. This ‘stamper’ has bumps at the
places where pits are to be made in the CD. 

When the stamper is ready, it is installed in the core of the CD press. The
negative die forms a part of the mould which is used to cast the CD. The CD
is cast by heating plastic (polycarbonate) and injecting it into the mould.
When the plastic has cooled, it leaves a disc in the mould which has a
precise imprint of the pit pattern. This disc then passes to the following
station in the machine to be given a reflective aluminium layer on the side
with the pit pattern. This layer causes the laser light to be reflected when
the CD is played. In the following process step the aluminium layer is
coated in a protective transparent lacquer. The lacquer prevents the
aluminium from oxidising and ensures that the CD remains antistatic. In most
cases a label is then printed on the CD in the same machine. 

All of this must be carried out with great precision. A single particle of
dust can potentially cause irregularities and subsequently lead to hitches
in the music. In the early days expensive cleanrooms were required to allow
the equipment to operate unhindered and, because every person carries a lot
of dust with them, the specialist technologists were dressed like astronauts
so as to prevent any risk of contamination.  

The extremely short development time for a CD factory could only be achieved
using concurrent engineering, at that time a new way of carrying out
large-scale production. Various technical aspects of the presses were not
developed one after the other, but in parallel by separate teams. This meant
that work was being carried out simultaneously on the processes for the
presses, the application of a reflective metallic layer, the protective
transparent coating, the printing of a label and the design of a factory. 

This parallel method of working requires that the development teams are
exceptionally well geared to one another. The manner in which the reflective
layer had to be applied, for example, was very much dependent on the
temperature during pressing or on the properties of the protective coating.
A change in one process had consequences for another. 

The PolyGram engineers did not know whether or not the result would be
favourable until just before they were to commence building the factory.
Then a prototype CD player became available with an audio output, with which
the music could be made audible. Until that point in time, the test
pressings could only be assessed by means of measuring instruments. 

In August 1982 the real pressing was ready to begin in the new factory, not
far from the place where Emil Berliner had produced his first gramophone
record 93 years earlier. (Deutsche Grammophon, Berliner’s company, had by
now become a part of PolyGram). The first CD that was pressed in Hanover was
a recording of Herbert von Karajan conducting the Alpine Symphony by Richard
Strauß. In January 1983, 500 working days after the start of production,
half a million CDs had been made. The demand from Japan in particular was
overwhelming. In North America a handful of titles were released in 1982,
one of the first was Billy Joel's 52nd street.