Obit: Norio Ohga - CD Creator

Subject: RE: Obit: Norio Ohga - CD Creator
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 25 Apr 11 - 10:11 PM

"I have a portable drive" etc

You need a second one that back that up to, or when it dies - they have a very finite life - you will lose the lot all in one go ....

Subject: RE: Obit: Norio Ohga - CD Creator
From: josepp
Date: 25 Apr 11 - 12:26 PM

I have a portable drive that I rip all my CDs to. I have well over a thousand CDs stored on it including virtually every form of music in the world--even folk.

I can plug it into any computer including my car with a USB and listen to practically anything I want--jazz, blues, classical, avant-gard, rock, jump blues, ragtime, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, East Indian or Persian music, bossa nova, American Indian music, ambient, noise, 50s rocknroll, pop. I got stuff going back to the early 1900s. You name it, I got it. And I can carry it all around with me literally in my pocket. Entire CDs in full digital sound. Thank you, Mr. Ohga.

Subject: RE: Obit: Norio Ohga - CD Creator
From: EBarnacle
Date: 24 Apr 11 - 04:02 PM

One of the many things I appreciate about CD's is that they fit in the same racks that 5 1/4 disks used to fill.

Subject: RE: Obit: Norio Ohga dies
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 24 Apr 11 - 01:18 PM

He also decided on the size (diameter), and the early ones were designed to hold a maximum of 75 minutes of music.
An important advance, much simpler than the tapes. And on the personal level, I have about a thousand cds.

Subject: RE: Obit: Norio Ohga - CD Creator
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 24 Apr 11 - 01:00 PM

The CD is rumored to be on it's way out. I still use them, but I back up stuff on DVD and now BluRay, which are certainly siblings or first cousins of the CD.

punkfolkrocker, the "perspective" interrupted an interesting thread, it wasn't needed.

SRS

Subject: Obit: Norio Ohga dies
From: josepp
Date: 24 Apr 11 - 12:03 PM

Former Sony president, the man largely responsible for the CD and digitizing music, has passed away. Without him, we'd have never had ipods and mp3s.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110423/ap_on_hi_te/as_obit_former_sony_president

Founded by Morita Akio, Sony started off as a tape recorder manufacturer called Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha or TTK. When the Texas Instruments-sponsored Regency TR-1 transistorized radio hit the market in 1954, TTK was was seized with the desire to create an even better one. The TR-1 was bulky and heavy. Touted as pocket-sized, it really wasn't and required a 22-volt battery and cost $50--a lot of money in 1954.

Western Electric was selling transistor patents and so TTK bought them. They found the transistors were not up to snuff and had to dope them with phosphorus to increase their output enough to suit their vision. Bell Labs--who invented the transistor--had abandoned doping as impossible but TTK did it. They then began releasing truly pocket-sized transistor radios. In 1957, TTK released the TR-63 transistor radio which was cheap, light and only required a 9-volt battery. It was an enormous global success. So successful was the TR-63 that TTK changed its name to a combination of "sonus" (Latin for "sound") and Sonny-boy--Sony--and became THE electronic giant of the world. And nothing would ever be the same again.

Subject: RE: Obit: Norio Ohga - CD Creator
From: GUEST,Woodsie
Date: 24 Apr 11 - 07:02 AM

Although the Japanese made the discs smaller, cheaper and easier to mass produce- laser discs were invented in England and developed by Decca and Phillips in a joint venture. Sony were clever in holding a patent for CD which gave them a royalty on EVERY CD sold!

Subject: RE: Obit: Norio Ohga - CD Creator
From: katlaughing
Date: 23 Apr 11 - 10:15 PM

That is an amazing story. I had no idea. Thanks for the link and info.

Subject: RE: Obit: Norio Ohga - CD Creator
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 23 Apr 11 - 10:14 PM

sad..

but to put in perspective
begs question..

how many singers, musicians and artists perished in the recent earthquake & tsuname ??

Japanese culture is so very special..

can't begin to comprehend the full scale of human loss..

love and respect to Japanese folk..


all those people .. all that industry.. all that art.. all those wonderfull Japanese hand crafted musical instruments..
lost in one moment of seismic catastrophe..

reminds of how most of entire Japanese silent movie archive was burned & lost to allied bombing raids..

Subject: Obit: Norio Ohga - CD Creator
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 23 Apr 11 - 06:54 PM

Sony chairman credited with developing CDs dies

By YURI KAGEYAMA
Associated Press
11 04 23

TOKYO — As a young man, aspiring opera singer Norio Ohga wrote to Sony to complain about the quality of its tape recorders. That move changed the course of his life, as the company promptly recruited the man whose love of music would shape the development of the compact disc and transform the Japanese electronics maker into a global software and entertainment empire.

Sony's president and chairman from 1982 to 1995, Ohga died Saturday in Tokyo of multiple organ failure, the company said. He was 81.
Ohga connection to music steered his work. The flamboyant music connoisseur insisted the CD be designed at 12 centimeters (4.8 inches) in diameter to hold 75 minutes worth of music — in order to store Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in its entirety.

From the start, Ohga recognized the potential of the CD's superior sound quality. In the 1970s, when Ohga insisted CDs would eventually replace record albums, skeptics scoffed. Herbert von Karajan, Stevie Wonder and Herbie Hancock spoke up in defense of Sony's digital sound.
Sony sold the world's first CD in 1982 and CDs overtook LP record sales in Japan five years later. The specifications are still used today and fostered the devices developed since.

"It is no exaggeration to attribute Sony's evolution beyond audio and video products into music, movies and game, and subsequent transformation into a global entertainment leader to Ohga-san's foresight and vision," Sony Corp. Chairman and CEO Howard Stringer said Saturday, using the Japanese honorific.

... ... ...

[More at the link]

John