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2023

Learning to Learn

The CD at 40 Project

On-the-job training.

Just as manufacturers and other producers of compact discs had to learn on-the-fly how to succesfully run a facility, so did consumers have to learn about this strange new format. This depicts a typical sales scenario in March 1983 in Amsterdam, with a salesperson showing a potential customer how to use a demonstration CD in one of the then brand-new Philips home system players. Image by Marcel Antonisse / Anefo, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How do you learn to make a product that no one has ever made before? We hear about the combination of training and trial-and-error that allowed people succeed in a brand new industry:

The CD at 40 Project

The CD at 40 Project

The CD at 40 project is a research impact project funded by Durham University and led by Dr Eamonn Bell (Department of Computer Science). It investigates the history of compact disc manufacture and use in the UK, since the invention of the format in the early 1980s.

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