The Philips factory in Germany, where the world's first CD was pressed, belonged to Polygram

CDs were introduced on the market in November 1982, a catalogue of around 150 titles - mainly classical music - had been produced.

As early as 1979, Philips and Sony set up a joint task force of engineers to design the new digital audio disc.

The original target storage capacity for a CD was one hour of audio content, and a disc diameter of 115 mm was sufficient for this, however both parties extended the capacity to 74 minutes to accommodate a complete performance of Beethoven's 9th Symphony.

the first album to sell over one million copies in this new format, marking the success of the CD as the emerging format of choice for music quality.

Over 200 billion CDs have been sold worldwide over the past 25 years

Even though a single CD is only 1.2 mm thick, if all CDs ever produced were piled up, the stack of CDs would circle the earth six times.