During a reunion-like meeting in the Auditorium Rick Harwig, director of Philips Research, accepted the prestigious prize of the international engineers association IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers). The various speakers all underlined the importance of innovation at a time of an economic crisis.

“Small though the Benelux may be, it is a clever, ingenious region nonetheless”, said Georges Gielen, president of the IEEE Benelux section. “The CD player is just one example of the extraordinary genius of the Benelux.” Still, it is the first invention in the region that deserved an award, according to the IEEE. Gielen explains why: “The digitization of audio systems has been of tremendous importance for nearly every household, over a period of at least 25 years.”

Philips and Sony
Throughout the world over 240 billion CDs, 3.5 billion audio CD players and 3 billion CD-ROM drives have been sold. “One cannot ascribe the invention of the CD to only one person”, said Joop Sinjou, who witnessed the birth of the CD at the time as project leader. “It was the result of a team effort, like most innovations nowadays. The Philips management clearly indicated that the CD had to become a worldwide industry standard if it was to be successful.”

That much the company had learnt from the development of the Video 2000, which was not compatible with VHS. For this reason Philips collaborated with Sony from the beginning. By mutual consultation it was decided that the diameter of a disc would be twelve centimeters, while the hole in the middle would be the size of a Dutch ten-cent piece.

Sinjou brought along the first CD prototype, codenamed “Pinkeltje”. It was demonstrated all over the world, inter alia during the Salzburger Festspiele in Austria. Conductor Herbert von Karajan, after having listened to it together with the members of his orchestra, welcomed its arrival: “CD is a gift for the music lover”.

Sinjou still listens to music on the CD player that he got in 1983. He is amazed when he sees the ease with which his grandchildren use and handle the discs and clearly remembers that he was at least fifteen years old when he was first allowed to operate his father’s LP player. Very cautiously he positioned the needle in the groove of a turning record.

Brainport
The necessity to keep investing in research was emphasized also by mayor Rob van Gijzel, Paul Rüpp on behalf of the Queen’s Commissioner for North Brabant and Hans de Groene for the Ministry of Economic Affairs. Van Gijzel: “The CD is an early example of co-makership in Brainport. Cooperation was and continues to be the key to success.” In Van Gijzel’s opinion Brainport is the perfect region to come up with a solution for today’s crisis./.