Two anniversary's were observed in past two weeks. Twenty-five years ago, on 17 August 1982, the first compact discs containing Richard Strauss' Alpine Symphony were mass produced. By 1986, CD players outsold record players, and by 1988, there were more CD sales then record sales. CD sales reached their peak in 2001 with 712 million sold, but pressure from other formats like MP3 has cut CD sales by 25% by 2007.
Then thirty years ago, on 24 August 1977, RCA announced a suggested retail price of $1,000 for its VBT200 VHS VCR to be marketed in the US. This price point - and a fortuitous set of circumstances that created the slogan "Four hours, $1,000, SelectaVision" explained here and here helped propel the VHS format tapes into the lead over Betamax.
The rapidity of change should remind us of how fragile our history has become - I wonder how many recordings have been made on only one type of format in the past thirty years and in fifty years (or sooner) will be lost forever. The US Library of Congress has as National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP), but as has been noted,
Current estimates are that in 2006, 161 billion trillion bytes -- 161 exabytes -- of digital data were generated in the world -- equivalent to 12 stacks of books reaching from the Earth to the sun. In just 15 minutes, the world produces an amount of data equal to all the information held at the Library of Congress.
I wonder if that number includes family digital photos and movies?
