However, the compact disk came into popularity when it was mass manufactured by Philips in 1980.

The Digital Compact Disc

The digital compact disc, now commonplace in stereos and computers, was invented in the late 1960s by James T. Russell.

Russell was born in Bremerton, Washington in 1931. At age six, he invented a remote-control battleship, with a storage chamber for his lunch. Russell went on to earn a BA in Physics from Reed College in Portland in 1953. Afterward, he went to work as a Physicist in General Electric's nearby labs in Richland, Washington.

At GE, Russell initiated many experimental instrumentation projects. He was among the first to use a color TV screen and keyboard as the sole interface between computer and operator; and he designed and built the first electron beam welder. In 1965, when Columbus, Ohio - based Battelle Memorial Institute opened its Pacific Northwest Laboratory in Richland, Washington, Russell joined the effort as Senior Scientist. He already knew what avenue of research he wanted to pursue.

Russell was an avid music listener. Like many audiophiles of the time, he was continually frustrated by the wear and tear suffered by his vinyl phonograph records. He was also unsatisfied with their sound quality: his experimental improvements included using a cactus needle as a stylus. Alone at home on a Saturday afternoon, Russell began to sketch out a better music recording system --- and was inspired with a truly revolutionary idea.

Russell envisioned a system that would record and replay sounds without physical contact between its parts; and he saw that the best way to achieve such a system was to use light. Russell was familiar with digital data recording, in punch card or magnetic tape form. He saw that if he could represent the the binary 0 and 1 with dark and light, a device could read sounds or indeed any information at all without ever wearing out. If he could make the binary code compact enough, Russell saw that he could store not only symphonies, but entire encyclopedias on a small piece of film.

Battelle let Russell pursue the project, and 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.