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The 305 RAMAC — First Commercial Hard Drive

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the looking-back-for-perspective dept.

Captain DaFt writes "Snopes.com has an article that gives an interesting look back at the first commercial hard drive, the IBM 350. Twice as big as a refrigerator and weighing in at a ton, it packed a whopping 4.4MB! Compare that to the 1-4GB sticks that most of us have on our keychains today."

1 of 244 comments (clear)

  1. When computers used vacuum tubes by Kupfernigk · · Score: 5, Insightful
    The RAMAC was tube controlled. In fact I have several old computer tubes, and the particular one I am thinking of is a dual triode, which means that it can form a 1-bit memory. It is about the size of 4 of my 8-Gbyte USB sticks, so its information density is about 250 billion times less. 250 billion is about 2 ^ 38. Moore's Law calls for a doubling of memory density every 18 months, so 38 * 1.5 = 57 years. And the tube was made sometime in the 50s.

    Truly Moore's Law is an amazing thing.

    --
    From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."