The CDs and DVDs we so wantonly use and throw today wouldn't have even be possible had it not been for mind of James T Russell. He started off with his inventions at the age of 6, when he crafted himself a remote-controlled battleship, complete with a chamber for his lunch. After his B.A. in Physics, he worked as a physicist with General Electric, and was one of the first people in the world to use a colour TV and a keyboard with a computer.
Frustrated with the way his vinyl records were degenerating, he wanted to work on a system where audio could be read without any physical contact between the moving parts. The best way, he figured, would be if he represented the binary 0 and 1 as intesities of light - dark and bright respectively. Furthermore by squeezing more dark and light areas into the same space, he saw that he could store huge amounts of music on a piece of film.
His work on optical storage began in the Bettelle Memorial Institute, where he worked as a senior scientist, and he constructed his first prototype of a digital optical recording system. Data was recorded on a photo-sensitive platter, which became the first CD-ROM. The idea evolved through the 70's, but with few takers at first. Eventually, though, audio companies realised the obvious benefits, and the rest is history.
