Where were you in '82? Yup, the humble compact disc hit its 25th birthday this weekend.

A joint venture between Philips and Sony, the project began in 1979 at a time when there wasn't even a laser that would last for more than 100 hours. The original plan was for an 11cm disc that would carry an hour of music, but that was expanded to 74 minutes to allow a complete performance of Beethoven's 9th Symphony.

Now, more than 200 billion CDs later, the format seems to have peaked. UK sales dropped 10% in the first six months of this year while music download sales increased by 50%. Still, once you download tracks, where do you put them for long-term storage...?

More CD history here and here.