- Who
- Sony Corporation
- What
- first
- Where
- Netherlands ()
- When
The standard for the compact disc was first proposed by Philips (Netherlands) and Sony (Japan) in 1980, and agreed upon in 1981 by the Compact Disc Standard Digital Audio Disc Committee. The first CDs became available to the public in Europe and Japan in the autumn of 1982, and the USA in 1983, where 800,000 discs were sold in the first year alone. Optical discs, which are written and read with a laser, have become the standard medium for home entertainment and computing.
