James T. Russell and the Invention of the Compact Disc

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James T. Russell and the Invention of the Compact Disc

James Russell was born in Bremerton, Washington in 1931. His first

invention, at six years old, was a remote-control battleship with a

storage chamber for his lunch. In 1953, he earned his Bachelor of Arts

in physics and graduated from Reed College in Portland. Afterwards he

went to work as a Physicist in General Electric's nearby labs in

Richland, Washington. There he started many experimental

instrumentation projects. He was one of the first to use a color TV

screen and keyboard with a computer. He designed and built the first

electron beam welder.

When the Bettelle Memorial Institute opened its Pacific Northwest

Laboratory in Richland, Washington, James joined as a Senior

Scientist. Whilst attending he introduced his thoughts about optical

data storage. He started constructing prototypes of a

digital-to-optical recording and playback system and dispersing

information about the potential of this technology. He found more

interest in this work outside of the company though, so he joined a

firm and developed his ideas as vice president for research and member

of the board. Here he designed the system architecture for an audio

player and directed the development of the hardware and the storage

media.

During this time, James listened to a lot of music and was always

frustrated by the wear and tear of his phonograph records. He was also

unsatisfied with their sound quality. So, one Saturday while he was

home alone, he started sketching out a better music recording system.

James wanted a system that would record and replay songs without

physical contact between its parts, ...

... middle of paper ...

... so the CD lasts longer. From the CD, came the CD-ROM, CD-I

(an interactive CD that's used to store video, audio or data), CD-ROM

XA (a CD that contains computer data, compressed audio data, and

video/picture data) photo and video CDs, CD-R (a writeable CD that can

only be written to once), and the CD-RW (a re-writeable CD that can be

written many times). We can now store our own music, documents, and

other files onto a disk, which is seen in both good and bad ways, but

either way, the CD has brought a lot more convenience to our present

world.

resources-

· www.howstuffworks.com

· www.inventors.about.com

· hutchinson multimedia enyclopedia

· Microsoft Encarta 98 Encyclopedia

www.ec.gc.ca/acidrain

Penguin Publishing House, 1987 , Pearce Fred Acid Rain. What is it and

what is it doing to us?

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