Compact Disc Quiz: How Philips and Sony Built the CD

Legend says the disc's 74-minute length was chosen so Beethoven's Ninth Symphony would fit, and this compact disc quiz explores how Philips and Sony created the format. Play 10 interactive questions on the 120 mm disc, pits and lands, 44.1 kHz sound, the Sony CDP-101 player, Billy Joel's 52nd Street and Brothers in Arms.

Start Compact Disc Quiz

🎯 Daily Trivia Challenge • 🧠 10 Questions • ⏱️ 150 Seconds

Question 1 / 10 Time: 150s

Partners
Which two companies developed the audio CD?
Size
What is the diameter of a standard CD?
Length
Which piece of music is said to have set the 74-minute length?
Reading
How does a CD player read the disc?
Sample
What sampling rate does a standard audio CD use?
First pressed
Which album was the first CD pressed in a factory in 1982?
Japan
Which album was among the first CDs sold in Japan in October 1982?
Player
What was the first commercial CD player?
Million
Which album became the first to sell a million copies on CD?
ROM
What did CD-ROM, introduced in the mid-1980s, store?

Explanations: answer key for all 10 questions

Q1: Which two companies developed the audio CD?
Answer: Philips and Sony
They agreed a common standard in 1979 and 1980.
Q2: What is the diameter of a standard CD?
Answer: 120 mm
The size allowed about 74 minutes of audio.
Q3: Which piece of music is said to have set the 74-minute length?
Answer: Beethoven's Ninth Symphony
The story is often credited to Sony executive Norio Ohga.
Q4: How does a CD player read the disc?
Answer: A laser detects pits and lands
Changes in reflected light become digital data.
Q5: What sampling rate does a standard audio CD use?
Answer: 44.1 kHz
It records 44,100 samples per second in 16-bit audio.
Q6: Which album was the first CD pressed in a factory in 1982?
Answer: ABBA's The Visitors
It was made at a Philips plant in Germany.
Q7: Which album was among the first CDs sold in Japan in October 1982?
Answer: Billy Joel's 52nd Street
It launched with the first CD players.
Q8: What was the first commercial CD player?
Answer: Sony CDP-101
It went on sale in Japan in 1982.
Q9: Which album became the first to sell a million copies on CD?
Answer: Brothers in Arms
Dire Straits recorded it digitally in 1985.
Q10: What did CD-ROM, introduced in the mid-1980s, store?
Answer: Computer data
CD-ROMs carried software, encyclopedias and games.

Compact Disc Quiz – How the CD Was Born

The compact disc was developed by Philips and Sony, which agreed on a shared standard around 1980. The 120 mm disc stores digital audio as microscopic pits and lands read by a laser.

Audio CDs use 16-bit sound sampled 44,100 times per second. The 74-minute length is often linked to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. ABBA's The Visitors was the first CD pressed in a factory, and Billy Joel's 52nd Street was among the first sold, alongside the Sony CDP-101 player in 1982.

Dire Straits's Brothers in Arms became the first album to sell a million CDs in 1985. CD-ROM brought the same technology to computers, before downloads and streaming replaced discs for most listeners.

What This Quiz Teaches

Music and tech fans will enjoy these questions.

Who invented the CD
How it stores sound
Which records came first
Which players launched it
How it changed computing

Did You Know?

Early CDs carried the slogan Perfect Sound Forever.
Scratches can often be polished out of CDs.
Recordable CDs arrived in the 1990s.
Jewel cases became the standard packaging.
CD sales peaked around 2000.