The invention of the MP3 format in 1993 didn’t make any mainstream news headlines. In hindsight, however, it was a pivotal moment that would revolutionize music consumption, and more. Invented by the German engineer Karlheinz Brandenburg and colleagues at the Fraunhofer Society, the coding format made it possible to reduce the size of music files without any significant loss of audible sound quality. Due to the size reductions, these digital files could be stored on flash-memory devices. This le...