The Hard Disk That Changed the World (2006)
newsweek.com
The Hard Disk That Changed the World (2006)
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Re: The Hard Disk That Changed the World (2006)
#2"The total amount of information stored on its 50 spinning iron-oxide-coated disks--each of them a pizza-size 24 inches--was 5 megabytes. That's not quite enough to hold two MP3 copies of Elvis Presley's "Hound Dog.""
So maybe a dumb question... what were they doing with that thing back in 1956? That's such a small amount of data in such a large space, was this actually used to do anything useful after it was sold?
Re: The Hard Disk That Changed the World (2006)
#3"The total amount of information stored on its 50 spinning iron-oxide-coated disks--each of them a pizza-size 24 inches--was 5 megabytes. That's not quite enough to hold two MP3 copies of Elvis Presley's "Hound Dog."" So maybe a dumb question... what were they doing with that thing back in 1956? That's such a small amount of data in such a large space, was this actually used to do anything useful after it was sold?
Don't think of it as two MP3s. Think of it as 25-30 book-length volumes of text.
That was plenty to handle payroll, inventory, sales, etc. for a business, especially since the data model back then was to only keep current, live data on the disk, while archiving old data off on tapes.
Re: The Hard Disk That Changed the World (2006)
#4"The total amount of information stored on its 50 spinning iron-oxide-coated disks--each of them a pizza-size 24 inches--was 5 megabytes. That's not quite enough to hold two MP3 copies of Elvis Presley's "Hound Dog."" So maybe a dumb question... what were they doing with that thing back in 1956? That's such a small amount of data in such a large space, was this actually used to do anything useful after it was sold?
My first computer with a hard disk was 10MB. You could store the operating system (MSDOS 5) and several programs (I remember Professional Write and QPRO. Not only that, but you could even store games. Prince of Persia was available in 2 floppies (5 1/4") with 720KB each one. You could store the whole game in the hard disk as well... This was around 1990.
In 1956, 5MB was plent of storage.
Re: The Hard Disk That Changed the World (2006)
#5"The total amount of information stored on its 50 spinning iron-oxide-coated disks--each of them a pizza-size 24 inches--was 5 megabytes. That's not quite enough to hold two MP3 copies of Elvis Presley's "Hound Dog."" So maybe a dumb question... what were they doing with that thing back in 1956? That's such a small amount of data in such a large space, was this actually used to do anything useful after it was sold?
Very successful graphing calculators have main storage measured in kilobytes.
You aren’t running npm install on these machines, you’re mostly working with numbers.
Re: The Hard Disk That Changed the World (2006)
#6"The total amount of information stored on its 50 spinning iron-oxide-coated disks--each of them a pizza-size 24 inches--was 5 megabytes. That's not quite enough to hold two MP3 copies of Elvis Presley's "Hound Dog."" So maybe a dumb question... what were they doing with that thing back in 1956? That's such a small amount of data in such a large space, was this actually used to do anything useful after it was sold?
Don't think of it as two MP3s. Think of it as 25-30 book-length volumes of text. That was plenty to handle payroll, inventory, sales, etc. for a business, especially since the data model back then was to only keep current, live data on the disk, while archiving old data off on tapes.
Also, reading from the article they are mentioning that there was already tape storage (non random access). I can imagine that the 5MB random access disks were using as "working memory" and then results where still stored in tape.
Re: The Hard Disk That Changed the World (2006)
#7"The total amount of information stored on its 50 spinning iron-oxide-coated disks--each of them a pizza-size 24 inches--was 5 megabytes. That's not quite enough to hold two MP3 copies of Elvis Presley's "Hound Dog."" So maybe a dumb question... what were they doing with that thing back in 1956? That's such a small amount of data in such a large space, was this actually used to do anything useful after it was sold?
https://www.ibm.com/ibm/history/ibm100/us/en/icons/ramac/
Before RAMAC, information had to be entered by running a stack of cards through a punched card machine, and answers would arrive in hours or days. RAMAC could find data in seconds, alter it, and move on to find a completely different piece of data. It let enterprises think about data in new ways, mixing and matching it on the fly. Random access made the relational database possible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database#1960s,_navigational_D...
The introduction of the term database coincided with the availability of direct-access storage (disks and drums) from the mid-1960s onwards. The term represented a contrast with the tape-based systems of the past, allowing shared interactive use rather than daily batch processing.
Re: The Hard Disk That Changed the World (2006)
#8"The total amount of information stored on its 50 spinning iron-oxide-coated disks--each of them a pizza-size 24 inches--was 5 megabytes. That's not quite enough to hold two MP3 copies of Elvis Presley's "Hound Dog."" So maybe a dumb question... what were they doing with that thing back in 1956? That's such a small amount of data in such a large space, was this actually used to do anything useful after it was sold?
It replaced a tub file (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tub_file), where workers would pull individual cards by hand.
Re: The Hard Disk That Changed the World (2006)
#9"The total amount of information stored on its 50 spinning iron-oxide-coated disks--each of them a pizza-size 24 inches--was 5 megabytes. That's not quite enough to hold two MP3 copies of Elvis Presley's "Hound Dog."" So maybe a dumb question... what were they doing with that thing back in 1956? That's such a small amount of data in such a large space, was this actually used to do anything useful after it was sold?
No post body was provided.
Re: The Hard Disk That Changed the World (2006)
#10"The total amount of information stored on its 50 spinning iron-oxide-coated disks--each of them a pizza-size 24 inches--was 5 megabytes. That's not quite enough to hold two MP3 copies of Elvis Presley's "Hound Dog."" So maybe a dumb question... what were they doing with that thing back in 1956? That's such a small amount of data in such a large space, was this actually used to do anything useful after it was sold?
It's not a dumb question. Consider the value in moving calculations from paper to a spreadsheet.
That's _about_ what it was like in the early computing days in terms of overall amount of data and the types of general processing that were done with it. Incredibly useful but only applicable to a narrow range of tasks.