The triumph of the CD begins in Hanover

Hannover's history is firmly linked to entertainment technology. Emil Berliner invented the record and the gramophone there 125 years ago. The first music cassettes were also mass-produced in the Lower Saxony state capital in the 1960s. On August 17, 1982, the triumph of the CD began. It was developed in Hanover and was also the first in the world to be mass-produced there.

It was the pianist Claudio Arrau who personally pressed the start button for the production of his own CD in Hanover. The silver glitter disc went into series production for the first time. An exciting moment, as Dieter Soiné, head of production at the time, remembers:"Of course, the machines had been tried and tested. We knew that when Claudio Arrau pressed the button, it would really start. We were glad that we were able to hire such a prominent artist. And that was an uplifting feeling that it really started."

From complicated to simple

The daily news also reported on the start of production at PolyGram in Hanover in the evening. A few months later the first CDs hit the shops. At a price of around 35 marks. Horst Söding is one of those who developed the compact disc and its complicated manufacturing methods in dust-free rooms: "There had never been a product with this level of accuracy before. There was no measurement technology at all, we had to develop the entire measurement technology ourselves. Well, and then finally there was the CD one day."

Success with a large team

In just 500 days, 80 chemists, physicists and mechanical engineers made the CD ready for series production in the final sprint. A life's work for Hermann Franz - he led this dedicated team in Hanover in 1982:"I look back on the old days with joy, not with nostalgia. The feeling of how things went back then, the memory of the teamwork, of the Motivation, of "wanting-to-get-over-the-hurdle" in a relatively short time is actually one of my fondest memories ever."

ABBA's "Visitors" opened the silver round

ABBA's first CD album "The Visitors" was released in the pop area. So if you still had an old, scratched LP, you no longer had to listen to it. In the meantime, up to a million CDs were produced in Hanover every day. The first steps turned into a mass business. Measurement technician Rolf Wengler was also part of the team from the start and was one of the few who had one of the outrageously expensive CD players at home. "That's right, yes. But that's part of it! Everyone was impressed and said:'We want that too!' So I've already done some advertising in the family."