Merlins Tower

Happy Birthday: Hard Drive

Posted on September 18th, 2006 by Merlin.
Categories: Anything Else, Computing, Weird Stuff.

Well – Belated Birthday !

On Sept 13th, 1956 – The First IBM Hard Drive – RAMAC (Random Access Method of Accounting and Control) – Drive was Shipped and Installed. – This date was the begining of it all.

For a comparison:
Your MP3 Player –
    Size: 2" x 1" x 5" Aprox depending on player.
    Cost: $300 dollars
    Capacity: 40 GB (Enough for Several Thousand songs 7,500 Again Aprox)

OR USB Drive:
    Size: 1" x .25" x .5"
    Cost: $35
    Capacity:  2 GB or 2,000 MB Aprox

The First RAMAC Drive:
    Size:  This thing weighed a ton – Yes, a full ton and the size of two large refrigerators.
    Cost:  Only $250,000 in todays dollars PER Year (This device was leased from IBM)
    Capacity: 5 Million 7-Bit Characters or about 4.4 MBin todays standards or     (About 1 to possibly 2 MP3 songs)
    Note: This drive did require an air compressor to protect the moving heads.
    this drive had 50 24 Inch – iron-oxide-coated disks
    This was the first device that allowed true random access to the data – before this all data was stored on data tapes and had to wind backwards and forwards to get to the requested data.

This is what it would have looked like:

Technorati Tags: History, Birthday, IBM, Hard Drive, Hard, Drive, Comparison

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