Everyone's second favourite music format (after vinyl, we're assuming) - the CD - has just turned 25. Yes, it's now been exactly a quarter of a century since the first "indestructible" (ha!) compact disc was made at a Philips factory in Germany, so hurrah and happy birthday and all that jazz...
Since the format entered the market (with Abba's 'The Visitors', no less) it's estimated that over 200 billion CDs have been sold, and it is still going strong, despite frequent reports that its demise is imminent due to the rise of the evil digital download.
Given the birthday celebrations, let's have some CD trivia shall we? The CD was a joint venture between tech giants Philips and Sony, and work began on it in 1979 with the initial aim being to develop a disc that could hold an hour of audio. The length was later extended to 74 minutes, apparently so one disk could fit Beethoven's 9th Symphony in its entirety. There was a general bias towards classical at the start of the CD age because it was thought only the more well off classical music fan could afford a CD player, the cheapest of which were retailing for what equates to £1000 by today's comparisons.
Despite what we just said regarding the CD surving against the odds, global CD sales are, of course, in decline. Although those making the format remain optimistic about the near future, with one of the format's senior engineers, James Heeskerk, telling reporters this week: "I don't have an iPod, although my youngest son uses one. But CDs are still his preferred format and he copies them on to his MP3 player".