According to legend, when compact disks were first created in the early 1980s, they were designed to be long enough for all 74 minutes of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony because this was Sony's director's favourite piece of music. Thankfully Kees Immink, chief engineer at Philips, was not swayed by the 10 minutes of Haydn's Second Symphony or Queen would have had no time for Bohemian Rapsody.