The Associated Press

First manufactured in Hanover, Germany in 1982, the first CDs held the tune of Richard Strauss' Alpine Symphony, according to Holland's Royal Philips Electronics NV, which jointly developed the CD with Sony Corp. of Japan.

Throughout its heyday in the 1980s and '90s, the CD became the most popular album format, making cassettes and LPs obsolete. But, in fact, it was the vinyl record that inspired the CD's design.

Like the grooves on a record, CDs are engraved with a spiral of tiny pits that are scanned by a laser – the equivalent of a record player's needle. The reflected light is encoded into millions of 0s and 1s, making a digital file.

It was a major technological breakthrough at the time. But with the rise of the digital download era, the CD's lifespan may have been cut short. Sales have fallen sharply to 553 million sold in the United States last year, a 22 per cent drop from its 2001 peak of 712 million, according to Nielsen SoundScan.