Like a vinyl disc, where a physical groove is marked into the vinyl, a laser marks the ink of a CD in a similar manner.

A laser (your disc drive) can then look at the pattern in the ink and understand it.

There’s no grooves on a CD tho???

They’re just really tiny, hence the laser. The smaller grooves means that more info can fit on a disc of the same size.

Man how the fuck did they figure out how to make that

well they looked at a record and said “How do we fit more information on this?” to which the reply is “Well either you make the record bigger or the grooves smaller” and making the grooves smaller is way more convenient so they say “Well how do we make the grooves smaller?” and that’s when a total madman comes out with eyes flashing and yells “WITH A LASER!”

And that’s how the CD was invented

how did they figure out how to fit information in grooves in a piece of vinyl in the first place????

probably got some ideas outta this

Fucking mad lads

 #the really wild fact is that even purely digital forms of storing information are basically just ‘count the bump’ technology really