I'm not sure who manufactured the first CD player (Japanese market? European? American?); was it Sony, or Philips, a combination of two or more companies?
I first saw a CD player (with a whopping huge price tag) in the early 1980s and I forget who manufactured it. I think I saw it at a store called Video Concepts in a shopping mall, and the only discs you could play on it at the time were all classical music. Those weren't cheap, either.
These days the manufacturing processes have been debugged enough so that it's not unusual for a tabletop CD player to last for quite a while. I've been through at least two such players over the years. When these things were brand-new in the early to mid '80s, they were economical to repair.
There are always some iron-horse items. Who has a first-generation CD player that is still in use? How often have you used it? Who manufactured it? Where did you get it?
Just for fun!
Matt J. McCullar, KJ5BA Arlington, TX