The fun part is realizing that the video laserdisc was developed because laserdiscs had been developed for music and sold like raw sewage.
Actually, no. The laserdisc was developed as a video medium. And video discs (both laser and capacitance) never achieved good market penetration because (1) capacitance videodiscs, although they didn't mechanically move the stylus like a phondisc, were a contact medium, with a physical needle, subject to wear, and they were so delicate that handling them directly would destroy them (much like touching the surface of a floppy disk), and (2) early laserdiscs had production problems like air leaks that caused the aluminum plating to deteriorate (something that still occasionally happens with CDs and DVDs). It was not for lack of trying, though: videotape has to be recorded in real time, which gives home off-air taping the advantage over mass-production plants, whereas until CD-R and DVD-R media were developed, there was no practical home disc recording system (yes, there were home phonodisc lathes at various times over the past century; one even appeared in a Marx Bros. movie; there were also phonodisc-based dictating machines).
The
concept of a videodisc actually goes back to the 1920s, when television was a laboratory curiosity, and scanning was an optomechanical process involving a
Nipkow Disk. Baird, who had developed the leading Nipkow-disk-based television system, also reached a proof-of-concept on what he called "Phonovision." But by the time Zworykin, Farnsworth, and others had developed a workable all-electronic television system in the 1930s, magnetic tape had already been developed as a recording medium, and by the time commercial television broadcasting began in the late 1940s, videotape was already on the way, and in the mid-1950s, Ampex had developed the 2" Quad system that was the broadcast standard until well into the 1980s.
The idea of a videodisc didn't come back until Philips, MCA, and Pioneer developed the analog laser disk as a video medium in 1978, and RCA and JVC developed capacitance-based systems in the early 1980s. But these systems were developed strictly for video recording: we already had two time-tested analog audio recording systems (the phonodisc and magnetic tape), and while digital audio was being used to eliminate generation loss in session tapes and mastering, it wasn't considered practical for consumer use. Moreover, at the time, laser diodes that could run continuously for long periods without burning out had not been developed; as I recall, the early LaserVision players used HeNe lasers. It was only after digital audio equipment (including adapters for recording digital audio on VHS tape) became available at high-end consumer prices that anybody began seriously considering a laser optical medium for consumer digital audio.
I've never heard of Arthur Fiedler being involved in the decision of making the CD just long enough to hold a complete recording of Beethoven's 9th, but the idea of that piece being the reason for the length specification has been around long enough that it may very well be true.
