Who invented the digital compact disc?

Who invented the digital compact disc?

An American, James T. Russell, invented the digital compact disc, now commonplace in stereos and computers. When Russell worked at the General Electric Company in 1965, he envisioned a system that would record and replay sounds without physical contact between its parts. He saw that the best way to achieve such a system was to use light. Russell believed that if he could represent the binary 0 and 1 with dark and light, he could create a device that could read sounds or indeed any information at all without ever wearing out. If he could make the binary code compact enough, Russell realized that could store not only symphonies, but also entire encyclopedias on a small piece of film.

After years of work, Russell succeeded in inventing the first digital to-optical recording and playback system (patented in 1970). He had found a way to record onto a photosensitive platter in tiny ‘bits’ of light and dark, each one micron in diameter; a laser read the binary patterns, and a computer converted the data into an electronic signal which it was then comparatively simple to convert into an audible or visible transmission.

This was the first compact disc. Eventually, Sony and other audio companies realized the implications of this invention, and purchased licenses for it.