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Punch cards
oldest known form of data storage is from 1725 and was done by Basile Bouchon when he used a perforated paper loop to store patterns that were to be used on cloth. But the first real patent for some kind of data storage is dated back in 23 Sep 1884 by Herman Hollerith (pdf) – an invention that was used for nearly 100 years until the mid 1970s. -
DVD
A DVD (Digital Versatile Disc or Digital Video Disc) is basically a CD that uses a different kind of laser technology. The laser’s wavelength uses 780nm infrared light (standard CD use 625nm to 650nm red light) which makes it possible to store more data on the same amount of space. A dual layer DVD can store 8.5GB of data. -
Punched tape
The first known use of the paper tape was back in 1846 by Alexander Bain – the inventor of the fax machine and the electric printing telegraph. Each row on the tape represents one character, but since you easily could create a fanfold you could store signigicantly more data using the punched tape compared to the punch cards. -
The magnetic drum
The magnetic drum was a 16 inch long drum spun that did 12,500 revolutions per minute. It was used to give the IBM 650 computer about 10 000 characters of main memory. -
Selectron tubes
RCA started the development of the Selectron tube. It was an early form of computer memory and the largest selectron tube measured 10 inches and could store 4096 bits. As these tubes were very expensive, they were very short-lived on the market. -
Magnetic tape
magnetic tapes was first used by IBM to store data on magnetic tape. Since one roll of magnetic tape could store as much data as 10 000 punch cards it became an instant success and became the most popular way of storing computer data until the mid 1980s. -
World’s first hard drive
The computer was nothing but a revolution since it could store up to 4.4MB of data (5 million characters) – an enormous amount of data back then. The data was stored on fifty 24 inch magnetical disks. More than 1000 systems were built and the production ended in 1961. IBM leased the computers for $3 200 per month. -
The hard drive
The hard drive is still a product that is under constant development. The Hitachi Deskstar 7K500 that you can see on the image above is the first hard disk drive that can store 500 GB of data – or approxmiately 120 000 times more data than the world’s first hard drive IBM 305 RAMAC. The trend is crystal clear; for each year we get cheaper drives that can store more data faster. -
The Laserdisc
but it wasn’t until 1972 that the first videodisc was demonstrated in public. 6 years later, in 1978, it was available on the market. It wasn’t possible to store data on the discs, but they could store video and image data with a significantly higher quality than tecnniques like VHS. -
compact cassette
The Compact Cassette is of course one kind of magnetic tape but since so many of us have used them, it deserves a special section -
The floppy disk
It was a read-only 8 inch disk that could store 80kB of data. 4 years later, in 1973, the a similar floppy disk with the same size could store 256kB of data plus it was possible to write new data again and again. Since then the trend has been the same – smaller floppy disks that could store more data. In the late 1990s you could get ahold of 3 inch disks that could store 250 MB of data. -
The compact disc
The compact disc originates from the laser disc, but it’s much smaller (and stores less data). It was developed in a co-operation between SONY and Philips back in 1979 and the Compact Disc reached the market late in 1982. A typical CD of today can store 700 MB of data.