Happy Birthday Compact Disc!

The Venerable CD Turns 25 Today

25 years ago today the first CD was mass produced in Hannover, Germany. Abba's The Visitors was followed by countless other CD releases, and CDs continue to be the number one format for purchasing music, although this will probably change in the next few years.
One of the interesting things that comes to mind is what this means for the age of individual CDs: CDs contain aluminum, which eventually rusts and makes the CDs unplayable. Accelerated aging and "stress tests" suggest that CDs should last about 30 years -- not as good as Vinyl -- and it looks like real-life is catching up. CD-Rs, at least the high quality ones which use gold, are said to last much longer -- up to 100 years -- but you have to keep them in cool, low-light conditions.