Early+Storage+Media

Computer storage devices weren't always as small and compact as they are today. Some of the earliest storage devices were as large as refrigerators, and were transported by airplanes. The pocket-sized 60 gigabyte iPods of today were just science fiction only 20 years ago. One of these early devices was the Selectron Tube. It was about 10 inches long and 3 inches wide. It only held about 32 to 512 bytes of information. It was developed in 1946 and was never successful because it was very expensive. Another early storage device was the punch card. These were sheets of paper with holes punched in them to represent the characters on it. They were used commonly with computers until the mid-1970s, but were also used in the textile industry as early as 1725. In Australia in 1932, the magnetic drum memory system was invented. In the 1950s and 1960s they were the main working computer memory. They had a capacity of about 10 kb. The first hard disk drive was invented in 1956 by IBM. It had 50 24-inch discs which had a total storage capacity of about 50 MB. It was transported by airplane. The first hard drive that was larger than 1 GB was invented in 1980, and it held 2.52 GB. It weighed 550 pounds, was the size of a refrigerator, and cost anywhere from $81,000 to $142,400. After that was the Laserdisc. These were about 11.82” in diameter, and held 60 minutes of music and video on each side. The main technology behind them was invented in 1958, although they weren’t commercially available until 20 years later, 1978. Floppy discs were first invented in 1971. The first were 8”, but later ones were 5.25” and 3.5”. The first one held about 79.7 KB and was read-only. Above: the IBM Model 350, the first hard drive ever made. Above left: an 8-inch floppy and drive next to a standard 3.5-inch floppy disc. Above right: an 8-inch floppy disc in use.