Norio Ohga passes away at 81

Sony has announced the death of Norio Ohga, who passed away from multiple organ failure at the age of 81 this past Saturday, April 23. Ohga is credited as the inventor of the revolutionary leap in music and data technology, the compact disc. He was also the founder of Sony Computer Entertainment in 1993.

During the development of the CD, it was Mr. Ohga’s instincts as a trained musician that led him to push for a 12 centimeter format, providing sufficient recording capacity at 75 minutes to enable listeners to enjoy all of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony without interruption. It was due to this format that Sony were able to move beyond music and movies only.

Moving to the optical format changed music and computing forever, and opened the path to DVDs and high definition formats like Blu-Ray.