Word: compaction
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...comparison shopping revealed that the Coop had the best prices, with the album or tape going for $22.95, and the compact disc selling for $38.95. Price runner-up Strawberries sold the album for $22.99 and the compact disc for $39.99. Newbury Street had the highest prices with $23 being asked for the album and $45 for the compact disc...
Just a few decades ago, the whodunit formula demanded by both publishers and readers was compact -- and cozy: 180 pages of pure deduction and cardboard characters propped up in a long-gone rural England. Along with a handful of other contemporary crime writers including Dick Francis and Ruth Rendell, P.D. James, 66, has gracefully shattered the rules. In her best and most ambitious tale to date, A Taste for Death -- her ninth mystery novel in 24 years -- James has become a kind of Le Carre of crime, blending the calmer depths of mainstream fiction with the white rapids...
Spinrad's estimate may be conservative. Corporations and national research organizations around the world are now spending billions of dollars to harness the new optical technology. The first fruits of their efforts are already apparent in such conveniences as fiber-optic telephone lines, laser printers, hot-selling compact disc players, credit cards bearing holograms, and laser price-tag scanners in supermarkets. Says Thomas Hartwick, head of TRW's Electro-Optics Research Center, near Los Angeles: "Every area that light touches will see technology advance by several generations...
Light is about to assume tremendous importance as a data-storage tool. The most visible example of that capacity is the audio compact disc, introduced commercially in 1983. More than 50 million CDs and 1.8 million players will be sold this year, generating total revenues of more than $1 billion. CD sales have been increasing fourfold each year, helping to send LP record sales into decline. A CD stores music in digital form in some 15 billion microscopic pits on its aluminum surface. As the CD spins inside its player at up to 500 r.p.m., a laser scans the pits...
...shoppers alike were able to leave a lecture hall to the music of David Bowie. If listening to his "Space Oddity" was itself a Harvard oddity, hearing Pink Floyd the Friday afterwards was even more unexpected. "Gotta have some Floyd," Latham was heard saying as he inserted the compact disc...