Laserdisc

The LaserDisc or Laserdisc (LD) was the first commercial optical disc storage medium. The laserdisc has great storage capacity, but limited backup-medium capacity; primarily, this technology was an expensive, high quality home video format. The laserdisc was commercialised under these brand names: Reflective Optical Videodisc, Laser Videodisc, Disco-Vision, DiscoVision, and MCA DiscoVision. Despite being technologically superior to VHS, the laserdisc was not as popular or as successful as it might have been; nevertheless, in the U.S. and Japan, there developed a niche following among collectors, more so in Japan where the laserdisc format was prevalent and so better supported. The compact disc, the DVD, the Blu-ray disc and all other optical-disc storage media formats developed since the laserdisc have technical features which originated with the laserdisc format. Laserdisc technology, using a transparent disc, was invented by David Paul Gregg in 1958 (and patented in 1961 and 1990)... full article at wikipedia