What were Playstation One Discs made of? It appears to be some kind of Black plastic.?

May be...

Vs. Cd's and DVD's of today Playstation 1 discs seem to be made of a differnt material. If for some reason it is just simple plastic how did they go about recording data on that?

a PS black disk reflects light just like any other CD. the coating was there as an early preventitive anti-copying measure, and is transparent to the Laser. unfortunately, it was easily gotten around.

They were made out of Regular CD-ROM's. The unique color was cause they made those Cd-r's with darker material. Nothing special though.