Happy 25th Birthday, compact disc!

Has it really been a quarter-century since the first compact disc was pressed, finally freeing us from the infernal routine of rewinding our mix tapes? Well sure enough, Philips was kind enough to inform us that its very first CD rolled off the production lines on August 17th, 1982, which history will forever remember -- perhaps unfortunately -- as a copy of ABBA's The Visitors. Nonetheless, this first widely-produced optical disc format would end up changing our lives forever, ushering in the era of lossless copies, easy music sharing, and an unwanted little friend we've come to know as DRM. Now with some 200 billion discs having been sold worldwide -- and probably twice as many distributed gratis by AOL in its dial-up heyday -- it would seem that the original shiny little platter is unquestionably in its golden years, with more convenient or capacious formats replacing it on almost every front. So Philips, the readers and editors of Engadget are proud to join you in saluting the revolutionary product you helped pioneer -- and also offer our condolences that things, um, haven't worked out quite so well for you in the transition to MP3. If you want to learn some of our (mostly embarrassing) first albums on disc, keep reading after the break...

Peter - Joy Division, "Substance"
Ryan - Beatles, "Help"
Evan - Billy Joel, "Greatest Hits Volumes 1 and 2"
Chris - Peter Gabriel, "So"
Paul - The O.C. Supertones, "Chase the Sun"
Don - Metallica, "Metallica"
Thomas - Mötley Crüe, "Theatre of Pain"
Joshua - The Dickies, "Killer Klowns From Outer Space"
Nilay - New Order, "Substance"

[Boyo @ Aug 16th 2007 12:03PM]

My First one. Eddy Brickell. What i am is what i am...great now that's in my head all day.

[oshean @ Aug 16th 2007 2:07PM]

My first audio disc was Marvin Gaye's Greatest Hits. I love the song Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology), which at the time was played on a Sony commercial. I will keep that disc forever... or until the media degrades. ;)

[Peach @ Aug 23rd 2007 11:52AM]

Oshean, same cd, same reason. Wonder how many they sold based on that commercial? :D

[AKBlade13 @ Aug 16th 2007 12:17PM]

My first CD was Destiny Child's Survivor. Sadly I lost it on the plain to France.

AKBlade13

[whitfit @ Aug 17th 2007 2:34PM]

Destiny Child's [sic] Survivor, and plain to France (sadly also [sic])... Young people and spelling...

[ET @ Aug 16th 2007 12:18PM]

AOL is celebrating.

[I LOVE THE CAPS LOCK KEY @ Aug 16th 2007 3:44PM]

In AOL's dial up hayday, they used to give out free (reusable) floppies instead of CDs. Those were the days, we used to go snactch up dozens of "AOL Dial Kits" Just so we didn't have to pay for our portable storage. Just makes me wish AOL put all their software on DVD-RWs...

[Stranger @ Aug 16th 2007 12:20PM]

DRM in the form of Macrovision has been available for much longer than that, more than twenty years in fact.

[Logic Bus @ Aug 16th 2007 5:15PM]

But was there Digital Rights Management before the media were digital?

[zargon @ Aug 16th 2007 12:35PM]

Finding out this information is kind of depressing for me, knowing that I am older that CDs...

[Boyo @ Aug 16th 2007 1:05PM]

I'm older than floppies. Although, not older than punch cards. Floppy and Hard (insert Nerd LOL)disk drives those were the days.

[Galley @ Aug 16th 2007 12:43PM]

I bought my first CD player in Oct. '87 when they hit $200. Man, was that thing a POS. It didn't FFWD, and instead of a display it had LEDs to tell you which track you were one. Of course, it only went up to 10.

My first disc was "Communiqué" by Dire Straits.

[Galley @ Aug 16th 2007 1:18PM]

Dopey me! It was 1985.

[agarfield2004 @ Aug 16th 2007 12:45PM]

And all the old people around me still don't know what they are...

[Patrick @ Aug 17th 2007 7:50PM]

Sometimes funny, but true. If one doesn't keep up with new technologies, one can remain in such a state indefinitely.
To people here, it sounds strange, but there are people who simply don't ever use computers, and therefore couldn't identify if something is a CD or a 3.5" floppy. Of course there are "obvious" things probably most people on there don't know either. :)
Oh, and I think my first CDs were a classical music collection given to me by my parents in the early 90s.

[mooky @ Aug 16th 2007 12:51PM]

Don't laugh. My first cd was the Lion King Soundtrack. :x

[Beamey @ Aug 16th 2007 1:03PM]

wow i thought i was the only one.
i got it for christmas

[james @ Aug 16th 2007 1:08PM]

Haha that was my first CD too!

Friend of mine said the same thing. Wierd huh?

[lightningrod220 @ Aug 16th 2007 9:06PM]

Same here. They must have had a huge marketing budget for that CD.

[Mahil @ Aug 16th 2007 1:55PM]

Ditto...That was such an awesome CD.

[Toby @ Aug 17th 2007 8:48PM]

I can't believe my first CD was the GoldenEye soundtrack...

[jf @ Aug 16th 2007 3:13PM]

wow... i'm pretty sure that was my first one too.

[mark @ Aug 16th 2007 12:55PM]

Whatever, h8rs at Engadget - Abba RULES.

[Glenn @ Aug 16th 2007 1:42PM]

Ditto. I like ABBA... never heard of "The Visitors", though. (And, it hardly bothers me what someone who wasn't even alive in the 70's thinks about anything that was goin' on then, as I expect is the case with most/all 'Engadget-ers'.) :D

(First CD: U2, "The Joshua Tree")

[Arathon @ Aug 16th 2007 4:17PM]

Agreed. And The Visitors was a good album, too. In fact...I'm glad Engadget mentioned this; I wasn't aware that it was the first, but that brightens my afternoon. Ha.

[Owen V @ Aug 16th 2007 12:58PM]

my first was the soundtrack to Men in Black

[Tom Bailey @ Aug 16th 2007 1:18PM]

Me too. I believe that has shaped me into the well rounded, gadget freak, obsessive compulsive person I am today.

[Flying? @ Aug 16th 2007 2:08PM]

Ahah, me too :)

[ronin @ Aug 16th 2007 12:58PM]

guns n' roses - "appetite for destruction"!!

[Jesse @ Aug 16th 2007 1:02PM]

I thought it was 1979

[mike @ Aug 16th 2007 1:04PM]

My first CD was Milli Vanilli...(hangs head in shame)

I was only 7, so cut me some slack.

[Chad @ Aug 16th 2007 3:37PM]

My first CD was Milli Vanilli - Girl You Know It's True. Given as a gift. And I still have it.

[3rdsun @ Aug 16th 2007 4:52PM]

I bet it was a copy and not the original. In fact everything from Milli Vanilli was not original

[Tony Emma @ Aug 16th 2007 1:06PM]

First CD was Michael Jackson's Bad cause it had a bonus track on it..."Leave Me Alone"

[Galley @ Aug 16th 2007 1:18PM]

From what I remember, that was the first CD to be released "day and date" with the cassette and LP. At that time, there were only a handful of pressing plants in the world, and you usually had to wait 6-9 months for the CD to be released.

[Craig @ Aug 16th 2007 1:07PM]

MC Hammer - Too Legit To Quit

[Warren @ Aug 16th 2007 1:19PM]

Ditto man. I bought MC Hammer and Boyz 2 Men 'II' at the same time from Zia Records. Oh...those were the days.

[tiuk @ Aug 16th 2007 1:07PM]

I think I bought my first discman (an actual Discman, as it was a Sony product) in 1999, around the time I got my first CD writer. Before that I stuck mainly to cassettes. I think I had a boombox-style CD player a year or so before that.

[mike @ Aug 16th 2007 1:14PM]

Oh, I think we all know the Discman. The real question is, How many seconds of skip protection did it have? Mine rocked out with 40 seconds. Almost enough to run 20 feet before it skipped!

[Horglasdr @ Aug 21st 2007 12:13AM]

Mine had only a measly 3 seconds of skip protection... it sucked balls.

[Rob @ Aug 16th 2007 1:08PM]

My first cd: Def Leppard's Hysteria

Amazing !!!

[Magallanes @ Aug 16th 2007 1:10PM]

My first cd was Windows 95. :3 and i still remember installing Windows3.11 ... 9 to 11 diskettes,and you can pray that any disk don't fail.

[JawnyG @ Aug 16th 2007 1:12PM]

First CD was "HALO - JESUS MUSIC" from 1990... I was a hold out. I was young, had a large record and tape collection, and I was broke (read cheapskate). I could buy 3 tapes for the price of 2 discs! I shake my head now, but at the time, it made sense in my frugal teenage head! LOL! Man... more music... less quality... what was I thinking?!?! Money for the girlfriend, I guess! LOL!

[PH0ENIX @ Aug 16th 2007 1:12PM]

Wow, I stopped buying & listening to CDs a couple of years ago. Now I just listen to mp3s. It'll probably be just like when I transitioned from tape to CD. I never touched my tape collection again, even though I kept it thinking I might go back to it someday.

My first CD = Naive Art (Red Flag), 1989. I was a 'po college kid at the time.

[Mike Jenkins @ Aug 16th 2007 1:20PM]

I think my first CD was Chumbawamba's Tubthumper.

[Rick @ Aug 16th 2007 6:23PM]

"I get knocked down but I get up again
You're never going to keep me down."

My First CD: Nirvana - Incesticide
I no longer have the CD-ROM but I have the MP3's from it. :-)

[Mike @ Aug 16th 2007 1:24PM]

my first cd was Prodigy - The Experience

[Asim @ Aug 16th 2007 1:28PM]

My first CD was Kid Rock's Devil Without a Cause

[Math-Sux @ Aug 16th 2007 1:34PM]

Agnostic Front. I think I owned the disc for at least 6 months before I even got a player!

[Diane @ Aug 16th 2007 1:34PM]

My first CD, Saga, Heads or Tales, bought in late 1983 or early 1984