History (1989): Anti-Japanese European Consortium

To try to face the leadership of Japanese and American (at a lower level) manufacturers on the erasable optical disk market, Europe is reacting.

Under the spur of European manufacturers and research centers, a consortium has just been constituted to develop and market erasable optical drives and media. It has been acknowledged and thus financed by the European Communities among the Esprit projects. The consortium’s goals are restricted for the time being to magneto-optical products, 5.25- and 3.5-inch erasable formats and is scheduled in 2 times.

First, in a three-year period, it will achieve the marketing of a first family of drives, reaching 1GB storage capacity per disk. Afterwards, in less then 5 years, where the storage capacity ought to reach 1.5GB per disk.

Sagem (France) is the company who will oversee this project in relation with Lexikon (Italy), Hoechst (West Germany), LETI (France) and Coventry Polytechnic (UK).

Each company has a very specific task depending on its qualification and know-how.

Sagem will develop and manufacture the drive, and will be supported by Lexikon, a subsidiary of Olivetti.

The German company Hoechst will take care of the disk manufacturing on glass and plastic substrates. Hoechst, who already manufactures optical media in small quantities, will therefore offer its results on research in sensible substrates used in magneto-optical technology to the other contractors.

The LETI, a department of the CEA, or Commissariat à L’Energie Atomique (Grenoble, France) will have two different tasks. It will provide its know-how on optical head development, and will also study second gen optical storage devices using amorphous materials and transitional metal.

This work will be completed by Coventry Polytechnic’s students who have acquired experience in magnetic and magneto-optical products for several years.

The goal is to develop a storage peripheral that will fulfill the needs of workstations or personal computers in the 90s.

This article is an abstract of news published on the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter on issue ≠23, published on December 1989.