CD full form

The compact disc (CD) is a digital optical disc data storage format that was co-developed by Philips and Sony to store and play digital audio recordings. It uses the Compact Disc Digital Audio format which typically provides 74 minutes of audio on a disc. In this article we are going to study about CD's and its types . We will also study why CD's became the most useful gadgets for decades and also be covering about technologies that replaced CD's.

CD Full Form

Compact Disc or CD is a circular digital disk mainly used for data storage. It is an extension of Laser Disc. It was used in 20's. It was the most popular storage device at that time. Before CD's storage devices like Magnetic Tape and Punch cards were used for storing the data. They were little complex so CD's became easy to use.

History of CD

It was first developed by two companies namely Sony and Philips. CD was initially developed for sound recordings and storage only. Later on as technology evolved, a CD was enabled to store chunks of data in its disk. CD then came to be known as CD-ROM (Compact Disk-Read Only Memory). The data stored has the read operation only but not the write operation. The first ever CD audio player was made available publicly by Sony in Japan. 

Features of CD

The physical features of a CD include: 

1. A standard Compact Disc is about 120 millimeters in diameter and 1.2 millimeters in terms of width. 
2. It is mostly made up of plastic and has a shiny metallic surface. 
3. It weighs upto 15 to 20 grams only. 
4. The storage capacity of a CD is upto 700 MiB(Mebibyte) which means audio quality of upto 80 minutes can run using a Compact Disc.

Types of CD

• CD-ROM: Compact Disc-Read Only Memory is a popular and standard optical disk used for reading data in computers. 
• CD-R: Recordable Compact Disc has write operation feature. It is made up of special dye which reflects different colours when light falls on it. The shelf life of CD-R is 20 to 100 years. 
• RW-CD: ReWritable Compact Disc is a disk in which data can erased and rewritten again and again. 
• VCD: Video Compact Disc enables one to see a moving images clearly on the screen. 

Advantages

• It is small in terms of size. 
• It is portable. 
• Faster data access. 
• It is cheap to produce. 

Disadvantages

• It has smaller storage capacity. 
• When used more, it may produce scratches.  

The Future of Compact Discs

The CD has seen a steady decline in use, particularly during the early 2010s. Digital formats have overtaken CDs in the music world, which has seen a huge shift away from physical mediums with the rise of streaming audio and digital downloads. While compact disc sales were more profitable for those in the music industry, convenience and low costs have fewer consumers turning to the physical medium.

Conclusion

Compact Disk used to be one of the biggest players in digital storage industry but was overpowered by new technologies. Since then, CDs have been mostly replaced by USB drives, cloud storage and streaming services aggressively. But they are hugely important in the history of data storage and distribution. They pioneered new innovations, and for some of us CDs are nostalgic signifiers of the digital revolution which marked out an era change during 20th-into-the start-of-21st century.