The year, 1982.
The first album to be released on CD was Billy Joel’s 52nd Street on October 1, 1982 in Japan, alongside Sony’s CD player CDP-101. 50 CDs were released on this day, with Joel’s nominally number 1, from the the first commercial compact disc pressing plant in Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan – owned by Sony, opened in April 1982.
Earlier in the Summer of ’82, the first test CD was pressed in Langenhagen near Hannover (West Germany), by the Polydor Pressing Operations plant. The disc contained a recording of Richard Strauss’s Eine Alpensinfonie (in English, An Alpine Symphony), played by the Berlin Philharmonic and conducted by Herbert von Karajan. In August 1982 the real pressing was ready to begin in the new factory. The first CD to be manufactured at the new factory was The Visitors (1981) by ABBA (DDD in SPARS code); a first public demonstration of the new discs was on the BBC television program Tomorrow’s World using The Bee Gees’ album Living Eyes.
Early the following year, on 2nd March 1983, CD players and discs (16 titles from CBS Records) were released in the United States and other markets.
