Why was 74 minutes chosen as the standard length?
(1999/07/18) The general belief is that it was chosen because the CD designers wanted to have a format that could hold Beethoven’s ninth symphony. They were trying to figure out what diameter to use, and the length of certain performances settled it. There are several different versions of the story. Some say a Polygram (then part of Philips) artist named Herbert von Karajan wanted his favorite piece to fit on one disc. Another claims the wife of the Sony chairman wanted it to hold her favorite symphony. An interview in the July 1992 issue of _CD-ROM Professional_ reports a Mr. Oga at Sony made the defining request. The “urban legends” web site has some interesting articles for anyone wishing to puruse the matter further. The relationship of Beethoven’s ninth to the length is noted “believed true” in the alt.folklore.urban FAQ listing, but no particular variant is endorsed. http://www.urbanlegends.com/misc/cd/cd_length_skeptical.html http://www.urbanlegends.com/misc/cd/cd_length_karaja
The general belief is that it was chosen because the CD designers wanted to have a format that could hold Beethoven’s ninth symphony. They were trying to figure out what dimensions to use, and the length of certain performances settled it. There are several different versions of the story. Some say a Polygram (then part of Philips) artist named Herbert von Karajan wanted his favorite piece to fit on one disc. Another claims the wife of the Sony chairman wanted it to hold her favorite symphony. An interview in the July 1992 issue of _CD-ROM Professional_ reports a Mr. Oga at Sony made the defining request. (This is almost certainly Norio Ohga, who became President and COO of Sony in 1982 and has been a high-level executive ever since.) The “urban legends” web site has some interesting articles for anyone wishing to puruse the matter further. The relationship of Beethoven’s ninth to the length is noted “believed true” in the alt.folklore.urban FAQ listing, but no particular variant is en
(2005/02/15) In common use, an “ISO” is a file that contains the complete image of a disc. Such files are often used when transferring CD-ROM images over the Internet. Depending on who you’re talking to, “ISO” may refer to all disc image files or only certain kinds. Going by the more restrictive definition, an “ISO” is created by copying an entire disc, from sector 0 to the end, into a file. Because the image file contains “cooked” 2048-byte sectors and nothing else, it isn’t possible to store anything but a single data track in this fashion. Audio tracks, mixed-mode discs, CD+G, multisession, and other fancy formats can’t be represented. To work around this deficiency, software companies developed their own formats that *could* store diverse formats. Corel developed CIF, which is still in use by Roxio’s Easy CD Creator. (What does CIF mean? Nobody knows, though “Corel Image Format” is as good a definition as any.) Jeff Arnold’s CDRWIN created them as “BIN” files, with a separate “cue
The general belief is that it was chosen because the CD designers wanted to have a format that could hold Beethoven’s ninth symphony. They were trying to figure out what diameter to use, and the length of certain performances settled it. There are several different versions of the story. Some say a Polygram (then part of Philips) artist named Herbert von Karajan wanted his favorite piece to fit on one disc. Another claims the wife of the Sony chairman wanted it to hold her favorite symphony. An interview in the July 1992 issue of _CD-ROM Professional_ reports a Mr. Oga at Sony made the defining request. The “urban legends” web site has some interesting articles for anyone wishing to puruse the matter further. The relationship of Beethoven’s ninth to the length is noted “believed true” in the alt.folklore.urban FAQ listing, but no particular variant is endorsed. http://www.urbanlegends.com/misc/cd/cd_length_skeptical.html http://www.urbanlegends.com/misc/cd/cd_length_karajan.html http:/
(2002/04/18) The general belief is that it was chosen because the CD designers wanted to have a format that could hold Beethoven’s ninth symphony. They were trying to figure out what dimensions to use, and the length of certain performances settled it. There are several different versions of the story. Some say a Polygram (then part of Philips) artist named Herbert von Karajan wanted his favorite piece to fit on one disc. Another claims the wife of the Sony chairman wanted it to hold her favorite symphony. An interview in the July 1992 issue of _CD-ROM Professional_ reports a Mr. Oga at Sony made the defining request. (This is almost certainly Norio Ohga, who became President and COO of Sony in 1982 and has been a high-level executive ever since.) The “urban legends” web site has some interesting articles for anyone wishing to puruse the matter further. The relationship of Beethoven’s ninth to the length is noted “believed true” in the alt.folklore.urban FAQ listing, but no particular
