Philips decided on it because it would make the case closer in size to cassette tapes, and they already had a factory capable of producing it. I guess 12 cm would have required more retooling, which would cost them some of their advantage over Sony.

Source: https://www.classicfm.com/discover-music/why-is-a-cd-74-minu...

"Philips engineer Kees A. Schouhamer Immink writes that Philips were pushing for the CD to be close in size to the cassette tape, whereas Sony were pushing for a slightly larger 12cm disc, partially because they knew that Philips already had a factory capable of producing 11.5cm CDs and if they could decide on 12cm as the industry standard then they would erase Philips' head start in manufacturing."

Interesting that the universal standard was created for such a petty reason. I was hoping to hear that there was some subtle but huge difference in 0.5cm. But no, it's just to screw Philips over, and we all have to play along.

It’s not like Sony and Philips are friends. They’re competitors. And the reason Philips wanted 11.5 cm is because it gave them an advantage, aka just to screw Sony over. This is normal business, not some moral failing.

Actually it is a moral failing. All that equipment had to be end of lifed earlier and much more work had to be put in. More garbage, more wasted energy. I can't see how that is anything but a moral failing.

I agree, and am glad you recognize it as such. When Sony erased Philips' "head-start", they obsoleted an investment made with the finite endowment of global resources (not to mention time). It's an underhanded tactic which disadvantages everyone to advantage a few.

I, for one, appreciate the additional 2MB of storage that gave us. /s

I wonder how many more minutes of audio 0.5 cm gets us?

If you ignore the hole in the middle and approximate the number of minutes to be proportional to the area of a circle then it's ~6 minutes.

Philips engineers some good stuff, my last flat screen was 12 years old. The only reason I retired it was because instead of waiting for my friend to come over I decided to move it myself (it was pretty hefty). Lost my grip and boom no more flatscreen (to fix it was far more than it was worth with a cracked screen). I wonder if my TCL will last anywhere near as long, it still had a great picture and it didn't need a soundbar like my new much cheaper TCL :) .

See also JVC's "VHS" vs Sony's "BetaMax". It is the way of standards warfare.

It definitely annoyed me that media cabinets that held an even number of cassette tape drawers "across" would not fit an integral number of CD drawers.

> It is the way of standards warfare.

Is it the way, or merely a way, and only the way so far in our brief history? I hate to see defeatism around gross inefficiencies like these.

Timmer, the Philips CEO at the time, is on record [0] saying it had to do with the max recording length.

He claims Sony's CEO liked one particular recording of Beethoven's 9th so much, he insisted it had to fit on a CD. And this particular recording was 74mins, 33 seconds.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kytmE4mrXWM, Dutch

edit: It was not Timmer, but Kees Immink and Hans Mons @ 8:25

Immink says the myth is that Sony exec Ohga's wife insisted on the 74 minute length, based on a very slow performance of Beethoven 9, which normally isn't that long. But he also says it's not true. This is in his classic paper on the history of the CD.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322951358_Shannon_B...

According to this [1] interview because it's approx the same size as a cassette tape.

[1] (pdf, dutch) http://docs.mfbfreaks.com/div/De_Ingenieur_Lou_Ottens.pdf

0.5cm smaller.