The Philips Prototype Of The CD System

Abstract

On March 8, 1979, a prototype of the Compact Disc (CD) digital audio system was presented at Philips in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, to an audience of about 300 journalists. The system was presented and demonstrated by J.P. Sinjou, the head of the Compact Disc laboratory of Philips’ main industry group Audio. The optical disc he showed had a diameter of 11.5 cm. The text of his presentation, together with the slides that he used, is reproduced in Sect. 2.2. Referring to this demonstration, R. Bernard noted in his paper (‘ Higher fi by digits’, IEEE Spectrum, pp. 28-32, Dec. 1979) that ”Demonstration systems have been impressive, and the total lack of background noise of any kind during pauses in musical passages is particularly dramatic” Since the prototype CD-player had such small dimensions, the engineers of the Compact Disc laboratory named it ‘Pinkeltje’ after a tiny dwarf who plays the central role in a Dutch fairy tale book. The text by J.P. Sinjou is followed by three papers that describe various subsystems used in the prototype player.