A long time ago stories and music used to be stored on vinyl records, cassette tapes and books. Unlike tiny discs, these things were fragile. Records were scratched, tapes were tangled and books could be lost to fire and time. People needed something that could store sound and knowledge, and at the same time, it would be hard to fade.
An inventor named Aurelio worked relentlessly with his colleague Oliver in their hidden workshop. They worked on creating the best way to store data. Studying many ancient ideas- how light bent through glass, how grooves on records held sound, and how crystal patterns lasted for centuries, they tried to find their own. One night working late, Oliver- who was quite clumsy, knocked over a stack of glass plates, scattering them across the laboratory.
While picking them up, he noticed something unusual- when the moonlight hit the edge of one of the smooth, round plates, it split into tiny rainbows. The glass seemed to reflect light in a way he had never seen before. He called for Aurelio and showed him his discovery. They got inspired and thought: What if sound could be stored not in grooves like a record, but in tiny patterns that only light could read?
Aurelio created the prototype- an extremely thin, reflective disc covered in microscopic patterns. When they tried to read it, nothing happened. The inventors got frustrated and almost gave up. But then Oliver remembered one thing: just like the ancient stories of hidden messages, the answer was there- it just needed the right key. So, instead of using a needle like a record, they shined a laser onto the disc. Instantly, the music filled the room- perfect, clear and untouched by time. The first compact disc was born.
And the truth behind this legend is, that in the 1980s engineers from Philips and Sony invented the first compact disc (CD). They tried the technique of lasers to read digital information from a durable and small disc. And it worked! And some say that during storms at night when the light strikes an old CD right, you can still hear whispered words of the first song ever recorded. “Riders on the storm…”.
by Susanpe
