Optical disc of light. An early optical disc system existed in 1935, named . An early analog optical disc used for video recording was invented by David Paul Gregg in 1958 and patented in the US in 1961 and 1969. This form of optical disc was a very early form of the DVD (). It is of special interest that , filed 1989, issued 1990, generated royalty income for Pioneer Corporation's DVA until 2007 —then encompassing the CD, DVD, and Blu-ray systems. In the early 1960s, the Music Corporation of America bought Gregg's patents and his company, Gauss Electrophysics. American inventor James
Optical disc drive CD, similar to the tray ejecting method used in internal optical disc drives of modern laptops and modern external slim portable optical disc drives. Like the top-loading mechanism, they have spring-loaded ball bearings on the spindle. Most internal drives for personal computers, servers and workstations are designed to fit in a standard 5.25" drive bay and connect to their host via an ATA or SATA interface. Additionally, there may be digital and analog outputs for audio. The outputs may be connected via a header cable to the sound card or the motherboard. At one time, computer software resembling CD players