Who Invented the CD Player?

Today is the age of small and portable media devices such as iPods and MP3s. However, before these technologies rose in the commercial market, CD players came first and played a significant role in the entertainment industry of the 21st century. It is time to know who invented the CD player more than 25 years ago.

Before CD Players Got Commercialized
As the summer of 1982 came to its end, the dawn of a new developed compact disc audio system commenced as four companies made their announcement of the development of the pioneering systems for CD players. Any of them would be credited as the one who invented the CD player. At an audio fair in 1981, Sony displayed ‘Goronta’, their CD player test model. This was one of the foremost models of CD players that were developed to play discs arranged in a vertical deck.

The Pioneering Commercial CD Player
In October of 1982, the first commercial CD players were released in the market by Sony, the company who invented the CD player. Even though it was a result of a group effort the person who invented the CD player was Nobuyuki Idei. He was a chairman of the Sony company as well as a group CEO. He called it as CDP-101, founding the name on binary numbers. CDP-101 included the CD tray that slides out horizontally, which is a common feature of CD players today. The one great difference of the CD players of yesterday and today is in the unit price since CDP-101 was sold in the market for the high price of $900.

Reducing the Size and Price
Sony realized that only a small number of people were willing to pay the high price of their player. Their engineers promptly responded to the problem by creating a CD player that was smaller. The objective was to create a compact and functional CD player that was cheaper by one-third of the amount of its predecessor. An executive at Sony named Ohsone was the one who encouraged the team to make the compact CD player with the use of a wooden model as small as four CD cases stacked together. He is instrumental in Sony’s role in being credited as the company who invented the CD player.

The Discman Comes
Two years after the pioneering CD players were displayed in stores, Sony introduced a new CD player model known as the Discman. During the product launch the unit was labeled as D-50 and the price was only one-third of the original price of the CD players then. The portable unit of D-50 has become very popular and was known popularly as the Discman after that.

CD Accessibility
With the release of the pioneering CD players in the 1980s, there was only a limited option for CDs to play. There were about 50 CD albums that were accessible in the market at the time but about a year or so later, the number increased to about 1,000 song titles. When Sony invented the CD player called Discman the production and accessibility of CDs became limitless. Sony is credited as the company who invented the CD player models that we know today.