Freakin’ Laser-beams
Can you remember the compact cassette or for that matter, the gramophone record most commonly known as the LP.
I can.
I still remember listening to little red riding hood and hansel und grettel, while watching the black disk go round and round. slightly tilting as it turned. I still remember pressing the RPM button making the voices sound squeaky and funny. You had to be vary careful with them or else the record would start skipping or repeating. Listening to children’s hear-plays while driving to our holiday destination by means of a state of the art cassette player with auto-reverse. Later I used my sisters old radio cassette recorder to tape songs I particularly liked. Or loaded games on my Phillips MSX1 taking sometimes over 15minutes to load snake. And If you where unlucky you’d have to restart because there was some dust in the system. Those where the days.
Last year when I was building a DVD about my sisters life as a gift to her wedding, I listened to some of the old tapes. The quality had deteriorated but still it was pure nostalgia. I still have my MSX and the original DAT recorder in a box somewhere on my attic and will probably stay there until my kids will sell them. Hopefully for a phenomenal amount of money because of the age of the system.
And then in 1983, March the second there it was. It was the era of the space shuttle, Michael Jackson and live Aid, MTV Launched, the age of Pac-Man and the Rubik’s. People where hoping to a future. rumors heralding the end of the Cold war. The Era of the colored blazer and wristbands. Back to the future , Indiana Jones, E.T something was changing. Star wars and star trek. Things that could be. Blazing across the galaxy with light swords and lasers.
Lasers.
Using bundled light had just found practical appliance. And then there it was. It was the Dutch company Phillips who came with a new invention which we know now has revolutionized the many industries. It was round and silver(or gold) about the size of a beer mat and made out of a few layers of plastic. A marvel of science. Little did we know then that that little shiny disc would revolutionize the way we store and move around data.It stored data by means of a laser that burned little holes in a layer and then could be read by interpreting the holes with a less powerful one. The laser had finally gotten it’s practical use in society.
Of course I am talking about the Compact Disc. More commonly know as the CD. this week 27 years ago it was new. And it hit like a bomb. This was the answer to the LP who needed to be handled with care. The answer to the tape it a shiny disc with many times the capacity of a diskette a cassette or an LP all together. It was marvelous. This was the medium that would replace them all.
Funny enough it seemed like it would. But nowadays you see an increase again in the usage of LP. Mainly because of its authentic analogue sound. With CD there is always a loss of sound even though it is impossible to hear for the untrained ear. The LP just gives off a warmer sound. That is why many audiophiles don’t want anything other then a record player with a tube amplifier. ( another subject for post here perhaps) The CD did not replace the tape. It is still widely used in the IT industry as a backup medium in a many more potent form. The diskette has almost vanished not to because of the rise of the CD but because of a newer appliance called the USB-Storage device. Still CD’s are widely used worldwide.As the carrier of music or data. Or if they are damaged as a beer mat. Nowadays a newer variant is also used the DVD which holds even more data.
But still the CD has changed the music industry and for that matter the world. It has made things more accesible and more mobile then before. I still, everyday. Enjoy the marvels of this invention as I practice for this years Global Jam. Listening to the music in my car stereo and I can hardly remember what the world looked like without them.
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