# all the worlds books on one CD? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 16, 2001, 12:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-the-worlds-books-on-one-cd/72665 "2001-07-16T12:16:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![curwin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f05b48/32.png) [@curwin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/curwin)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2001, 12:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-the-worlds-books-on-one-cd/72665/1 "2001-07-16T12:16:25Z")
In a computer text book that I had (I think around 1993) the authors made a claim that all the books ever printed could fit on one CD with a diameter (IIRC) of 7 feet. First of all, has anyone ever heard that statistic or something similar? Secondly, is that likely to be true at all? It doesn’t seem too likely to me. ---
**Author:** ![Patty\_O\_Furniture](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/96bed5/32.png) [@Patty\_O\_Furniture](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Patty_O_Furniture)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2001, 12:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-the-worlds-books-on-one-cd/72665/2 "2001-07-16T12:39:45Z")
Any kind of estimate is going to involve a large fudge factor & lots of variables. For example, is data compression allowed? How about pictures? Does “Where’s Waldo” count as a book? If so, then we’ll have loads of JPGs to store. A single CD ROM could store about 2000 books. That is assuming 1KB per page, 325 pages per book & no pictures or tables. I don’t see a single disk holding “all the books ever printed” even if it is seven feet across. ---
**Author:** ![Fiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e274bd/32.png) [@Fiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiver)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2001, 12:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-the-worlds-books-on-one-cd/72665/3 "2001-07-16T12:42:52Z")
I’ve never heard anything like that. Before I’d say it was possible or not, I’d like to know how you define “books.” Does that include bound master’s theses and doctoral dissertations? How about technical manuals? Bound volumes of magazines? The amount of material we’re talking about will vary greatly depending on how we define the term. Besides all that, it’s a meaningless statement; there are no CDs with 7 foot diameters, nor would there be a CD-ROM player to put it on if you made one. If expressed as “All the world’s books would fit on X number of normal-sized CDs” we’d begin to have some idea what we’re talking about. ---
**Author:** ![Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/earl_snake-hips_tucker/32/3269_2.png) [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2001, 12:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-the-worlds-books-on-one-cd/72665/4 "2001-07-16T12:57:11Z")
Martin Gardner, in one of his “Aha!” books, showed how all the world’s books could be recorded with just a scratch on a stick. Theoretically, anyway. In reality there would be some noteworthy obstacles. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2001, 12:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-the-worlds-books-on-one-cd/72665/5 "2001-07-16T12:58:00Z")
It sounds like the claim about a single 7ft disc (hmmm, practical) rather than X amount of standard discs is going to be based on the assumption that the tracks nearer the edge of the disc (being much longer) could potentially hold a lot more data than the tracks near the middle, but I’m not sure whether current CD technology works in that way, perhaps someone could enlighten me? ---
**Author:** ![Mikahw](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Mikahw](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mikahw)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2001, 1:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-the-worlds-books-on-one-cd/72665/6 "2001-07-16T13:20:00Z")
I measured a regular CD. The area of the hole thing turns out to be about 17.72 square inches. Take away the area of the non readable center, and you have 15.31 sq inches. The 7 foot CD has an area of 3339.36 sq inches. Assuming data storage is directly proportional to storage area, the 7 foot disc could hold 361.6 regular CDs, or about 126 Gigabytes. Is 126GB enough to store every book ever made? Sure beats the hell outta me. I don’t know everything, you know… ---
**Author:** ![Mikahw](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Mikahw](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mikahw)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2001, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-the-worlds-books-on-one-cd/72665/7 "2001-07-16T13:21:17Z")
_the area of the hole thing_ Must… preview… I meant whole, really… ---
**Author:** ![KneadToKnow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kneadtoknow/32/3999_2.png) [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2001, 1:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-the-worlds-books-on-one-cd/72665/8 "2001-07-16T13:26:03Z")
That’s all right, **Mikahw**. Now we know how many hole things it takes to fill the Albert Hall thing. ---
**Author:** ![Mikahw](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Mikahw](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mikahw)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2001, 1:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-the-worlds-books-on-one-cd/72665/9 "2001-07-16T13:26:32Z")
The 7 foot CD would have an area of 5539.36 sq in. I read my paper wrong. Everything else should be accurate, though. ---
**Author:** ![curwin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f05b48/32.png) [@curwin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/curwin)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2001, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-the-worlds-books-on-one-cd/72665/10 "2001-07-16T17:25:52Z")
Here’s the quote, from _Computers_ by Larry and Nancy Long (1993): > [@](#): > > The capacity of a single CD-ROM is over 550 MB - about that of 400 DS/HD 3 1/2 inch diskettes. To put the density of CD-ROM into perspective, the words in every book ever written could be stored on a hypothetical CD-ROM that is seven feet in diameter. Here’s another quote on the opposite page: > [@](#): > > A single CD-ROM disk can hold the equivalent of 13,000 images, 250,000 pages of text or 1500 floppy disks. So I guess now we can see if they are correct, if their numbers are wrong or their math is wrong. BTW, what about a DVD 7 feet in diameter? How much could that hold? ---
**Author:** ![Patty\_O\_Furniture](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/96bed5/32.png) [@Patty\_O\_Furniture](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Patty_O_Furniture)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2001, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-the-worlds-books-on-one-cd/72665/11 "2001-07-16T18:40:10Z")
That’s where we get into too many variables. DVDs are not only two sided, but also _multi layered_. > [@](#): > > A single CD-ROM disk can hold the equivalent of 13,000 images, 250,000 pages of text or 1500 floppy disks. A CD ROM is good for 650MB of data storage. Since the quote has already made images & text into different categories, I have to assume “250,000 pages of text” means just that- text only. That comes to 2.6KB per page. Depending on lots of goofy stuff like formatting ( **bold** , _italics_, underlining, colored text, etc), a single page of text can be saved in about 1KB of disk space. A CD ROM can store the same amount of data as **461** floppy disks. It would take more than three CD ROMs to hold the data from 1500 floppies. The last number I heard for DVD capacity is 17GB, or about 52,300 books using the numbers from my earlier post. ---
**Author:** ![waterj2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/858c86/32.png) [@waterj2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/waterj2)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2001, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-the-worlds-books-on-one-cd/72665/12 "2001-07-16T21:10:14Z")
OK, so one CD can hold 650,000 pages. The seven foot CD can then hold 361.6 times that, or 235,040,000 pages. While that’s a lot, I really doubt that it’s every book ever printed. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2001, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-the-worlds-books-on-one-cd/72665/13 "2001-07-17T01:14:40Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Mjollnir \* > **Martin Gardner, in one of his “Aha!” books, showed how all the world’s books could be recorded with just a scratch on a stick.** \*I don’t know what Martin Gardner would think of the following (maybe he would sneer at it), but… There is a Sufi saying that the meaning of all the sacred texts ever revealed (the Torah, the Psalms, the Gospels, etc.) is contained in the Qur’ân. The meaning of the entire Qur’ân is contained in the first brief chapter, al-Fâtihah. The whole meaning of al-Fâtihah is contained in the first verse, _bismillâh al-rahmân al-rahîm_ (In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful). The whole meaning of that first verse is contained in the first letter _bâ_’, which has a dot under it. The whole meaning in the letter _bâ_’ is contained in that itty bitty dot. Talk about **data compression…** ---
**Author:** ![Mikahw](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Mikahw](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mikahw)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2001, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-the-worlds-books-on-one-cd/72665/14 "2001-07-17T02:58:39Z")
> [@](#): > > A single CD-ROM disk can hold the equivalent of 13,000 images, 250,000 pages of text or 1500 floppy disks. That would depend on the type of disk. There’s no way you could fit 1500 full 1.44MB floppies on one CD. However, you could easily put 1500 360K 5.25" floppies on one CD. I’ve tried every floppy combination possible, and I could never got to exactly 1500. The two closest ones would be the 360K 5.25" floppy and the 720K double density 3.5" floppy. You can fit 1,800 of the 360K discs, while you could only fit 900 of the 720K discs. * * * As for the 7 foot DVD, a single sided single layer DVD holds 4.7GB, right? You could fit about 1.6TB on the 7 foot version. If you used a double sided double layer disc, you could fit about 4 times as much. ---
**Author:** ![sailor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a587f6/32.png) [@sailor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sailor)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2001, 5:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-the-worlds-books-on-one-cd/72665/15 "2001-07-17T05:51:55Z")
Let’s get real here. The National Geographic Society sells 110 years of their magazine (I am assuming about 1320 issues) on 31 CD-ROMs and that represents an infinitesimal fraction of what is published and has been published in the world. You would need millions of CD-ROMS to record everything ever published. ---
**Author:** ![don\_t\_ask](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@don\_t\_ask](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/don_t_ask)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2001, 6:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-the-worlds-books-on-one-cd/72665/16 "2001-07-17T06:57:50Z")
Yeah, but if you had an infinite number of scanners, and an infinite number of CD burners, then an infinite number of monkeys could… ---
**Author:** ![Mikahw](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Mikahw](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mikahw)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2001, 7:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-the-worlds-books-on-one-cd/72665/17 "2001-07-17T07:10:16Z")
The National Geographic 31 CD-rom set contains scans of the pages, right? Text files, of course, take up much less room. If you were to settle for text files, you would be able to store much more information. If we assume that each of those 1320 issues had 100 pages of text, each page of text contains 500 words, and the average word is 6 letters, The entire thing would only take up 396MB. There is one problem, though. Text alone wouldn’t do National Geographic justice, now would it? ---
**Author:** ![curwin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f05b48/32.png) [@curwin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/curwin)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2001, 7:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-the-worlds-books-on-one-cd/72665/18 "2001-07-17T07:31:13Z")
Well, I found another quote from this page that might be slightly more accurate: [http://www.artsci.gmcc.ab.ca/people/sumraini/157/Sstorage.html](http://www.artsci.gmcc.ab.ca/people/sumraini/157/Sstorage.html) > [@](#): > > CD - ROM > • Stores up to 680 MB. Equal to 477 HD disks. > • The words in every book ever written could be stored on a hypothetical CD-ROM that is 8-feet in diameter. Now the fact that this statistic is repeated, but in a different form, leads me to believe that there must be some “master” source of the theory, and if we can find that we can find out what it is based on. Now this site ( [http://itri.loyola.edu/digilibs/02\_03.htm](http://itri.loyola.edu/digilibs/02_03.htm) ) provides some different statistics: > [@](#): > > Everything Can Be Stored > The total number of different books produced since printing began does not exceed one billion. (The number of books now published annually is less than one million.) If an average book occupies 500 pages at 2,000 characters per page, then even without compression it can be stored comfortably in one megabyte. Therefore, one billion megabytes are sufficient to store all books. This is 1015 bytes, or one petabyte. At commercial prices of $20 per gigabyte, this amount of disk storage capacity could be purchased for $20 million. So it is certainly feasible to consider storing all books digitally. Is this more accurate? ---
**Author:** ![curwin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f05b48/32.png) [@curwin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/curwin)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2001, 7:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-the-worlds-books-on-one-cd/72665/19 "2001-07-17T07:34:40Z")
Upon rereading my last post, I realized that we need to through another variable into this problem: compression. Text is quite easy to compress. So using todays highest level of compression, can we get closer to our 7 (or 8) foot CD? ---
**Author:** ![curwin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f05b48/32.png) [@curwin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/curwin)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2001, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-the-worlds-books-on-one-cd/72665/20 "2001-07-17T16:22:32Z")
Ok, here’s a little more info: From the Winzip FAQ ( [http://www.winzip.com/xgifcomp.htm](http://www.winzip.com/xgifcomp.htm) ) > [@](#): > > some types of data (such as text files and picture files in the BMP format that the Microsoft Paint program uses) can often be compressed by 90% or more Therefore using the Loyola data, we can put the words of every book ever printed into a text file, and compress it, getting it down to 100 million megabytes. So who can do the math to find out: a) How big a CD would need to be to contain that much data (and there are CDs that can hold 800 MB, so that should be taken into consideration) b) How big would a standard DVD need to be? c) How about a double sided DVD? [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-the-worlds-books-on-one-cd/72665.md?page=2)