Optical recording: High-density information storage and retrieval

Optical recording systems capable of information storage and retrieval, using a highly focused laser beam as the recording and playback source, have been developed to a point where product introduction in the 1983-1985 time frame is highly probable. The product protentials range from low-data-rate (10-20 Mbits/s), single disk (10¹⁰to 10¹¹bits), random-access electronic office filing cabinets (augmenting existing word processing units) to high-date-rate (hundreds of megabits per second), multidisk (10¹³bits on line "jukeboxes"), random-acess archival mass memories. This article presents the basic features of these optical disk data storage and retrieval systems with particular emphasis on the recording source and recording media.