Old technology
It hit me yesterday that the Compact Disc has been around for nearly half my lifetime: Sony’s CDP-101, the first consumer CD player in the States, shipped in October 1982, while John Cougar, not yet having reclaimed his actual surname, topped the charts with “Jack & Diane,” which was not available on CD at the time. (The first discs pressed were Strauss’ Alpine Symphony with Karajan conducting, and Abba’s The Visitors; the first disc to show up in the US market was Billy Joel’s 52nd Street.)
Mostly I put this up for Trini, who is younger than the format, and who still prefers it to the inchoate downloadable bits some of us are known to fiddle with: you can’t accidentally delete a CD, although I did manage to freeze one once.
fillyjonk »
13 October 2009 · 7:16 am
“younger than the format”
Scary.
The older of the two I own dates to 1997. Because I was a cheapskate, I limped along for years using cassettes (I remember the folks at Schoolkid’s Records in Ann Arbor ridiculing me when I admitted I had no CD player).
I still have all my cassettes. Most of them still play.
CGHill »
13 October 2009 · 7:25 am
I was an early adopter only by comparison: I bought my first CD player in 1987. (It died after 20 years.)
All but one of my tapes still play, and if I ever get around to splicing that leader, it too is playable.
Donna B. »
13 October 2009 · 9:50 am
The media lasts far longer than the the interpreters. Sadly…
sya »
13 October 2009 · 10:12 am
I got to buy CDs around 1997 or 1998 thereabouts when I got a desktop computer with a CD-ROM. I didn’t actually get a separate CD player until 2002.