You Probably Haven't Seen One of These Before, Unless I Showed It To You Yesterday

 

I like old technology. I think it's the 'Museum' in me. I'm going to guess most of you reading this have never, ever seen one of these before. It's not a Laserdisc. It's a VideoDisc or, more accurately, it's a CED. That logo does appear on the back.

 

 

 

CED appears in small letters in the corner. This is a demo disc and was probably used in a store like Sears to display the technology. This appears to be one of the earliest such disks as it's dated 1981, the same year the players were launched.

 

This was only the third time in my life I can remember seeing this technology. I saw it on display once in a store, probably Sears. As it was only in sale between 1981 and 1986 (more or less), that dates that experience somewhat closely. After I graduated high school, somewhere around 1993 or 1994 probably, I met someone that actually still had one, and it was set up! We didn't get to play with it though. Then Monday I saw this platter at Goodwill for $2 and figured I needed to snag it. 

The platter is a thin cartridge from the outside.

 

 

I don't have a picture of the disc inside as I'm not sure how to open it without breaking it. I had to look it up to remember how it worked as it's been years since I read about it. Wikipedia has a picture of an open one so I'll link to it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CED_player

For those of you who don't want to spend time reading all that, inside it's a record! It's essentially a large LP that can play back video and audio as a stylus reads it.

How wild is that?

LaserDiscs were already appearing at the same time and they were a better, if more expensive, experience. Between VHS and LaserDisc, there was no room in the market for these CEDs and that's why they died out so fast.

Still, it looks neat.