Monday, September 11, 2006

Happy Birthday Harddisk

Listening to the Bavarian news channel yesterday evening in the car, having finally returned to Munich, I heard that the harddisk is celebrating its 50th year in 2006.

Up until 1956 the most moden computers which existed had been using magnetic tape or punch cards to store data...but then IBM came up with a computer which had a real harddisk for data storage.

This new feature was the size of a wardrobe (2m x 2.2m x 80cm) and weighed about a ton but it could store a staggering FIVE MBs!! That's just about one long mp3!

It makes you wonder what they did with such a miniscule memory...

Oh, and the cost for this harddisk with its 5 MBs was a mere three and a half thousand dollars a month (that's to lease it)!

Progress is not always bad.

1 comment:

Anji said...

I remember using 'floppy' disks in the 70's. The computer was miles away in Manchester and the terminals were like pianos. The modem was as big as a microwave oven. 'Sigh' those were the days.