Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by theamk 100 days ago
You got any source for this?

The symphony story might be a legend, but it's pretty well known that the original design was somewhere in 10-11cm range, but this was eventually increased to 12 cm.

The "diagonal cassette size" seems extremely far-fetched - first, who cares about this? If you are worried about boxes, shelves etc.. you want horizontal size, which 10 cm. And you are worried about holding in hand, 12cm is not very convenient for the smaller hands, a smaller size would be better.
3 comments
rbanffy 100 days ago
When respectfully handling them out of the box, I always stuck my index finger in the central hole and the thumb on the border. I have large hands but I rarely held them by the borders.
link
tracker1 100 days ago
If anything, I'd have guessed that the size of an 8-track in a car stereo was probably a larger influence on potential form factors for CD audio. Since car stereos were at least somewhat normalized in the early 80's. Not speaking to an adapter, just in terms of what would "fit" in a typical stereo hole in a car.

That said, I doubt that's the reality either... it's probably a number of factors. I am slightly surprised that a USB based read-only media format standard for players hasn't materialized, though it seems that online/rental models are what the industry really wants.

link
rasz 100 days ago
Source is Dr. Kees A. Schouhamer Immink. Philips’ principal engineer in the joint efforts of Sony and Philips to develop the Compact Disc (CD) https://www.turing-machines.com/pdf/cdstory.htm:

>The disk diameter is a very basic parameter, because it relates to playing time. All parameters then have to be traded off to optimise playing time and reliability. The decision was made by the top brass of Philips. 'Compact Cassette was a great success', they said, 'we don't think CD should be much larger'.

>As it was, we made CD 0.5 cm larger yielding 12 cm. (There were all sorts of stories about it having something to do with the length of Beethoven's 9th Symphony and so on, but you should not believe them.)

> The 8-14 bit channel code was agreed and all the specifications between them led to a playing time of 75 minutes.

link