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A History of Storage, From Punch Cards To Blu-ray

Posted by timothy on from the isn't-that-right-joey dept.

notthatwillsmith writes "Maximum PC just posted a comprehensive visual retrospective about data storage, starting with the once state of the art punch card and moving through the popular formats of yesteryear, including everything from magtape to Blu-ray discs. It's amazing how much data you could pack on a few hundred feet of half-inch magnetic tape!"

3 of 160 comments (clear)

  1. Re:to Blu-ray by jasonwc · · Score: 4, Interesting

    You're assuming Blu-Ray disks will continue to have only one or two layers. However, 8 and 16 layer disks have been produced, and would be readable by any current Blu-Ray player with a firmware update.

    Pioneer produced a 16 layer, 400 GB disk a few months ago, and they're attempting to produce a 1 TB disk by 2013.

    Also, I dispute your claim that there is not much difference between 480p and 1080p video. The detail level on some Blu-Ray's is simply staggering (e.g. Dark Knight, Planet Earth, Lost S04). Differences are especially apparent on animated content where production is all digital.
    For example, Wall-E and Ratatouille look amazing.

      It is far superior in color reproduction, vibrancy, and detail than DVD. There's also the benefit of lossless audio. Most Blu-Rays now come with lossless 24/48 khz tracks 5.1 or 7.1 tracks. This is significantly superior to the 448 kbit Dolby Digital tracks provided on most DVDs.

    Source: Wikipedia

    "In December 2008, Pioneer Corporation unveiled a 400 GB Blu-ray disc, which contains 16 data layers, 25 GB each, and will be compatible with current players after a firmware update. A planned launch is in the 2009-2010 time frame for ROM and 2010-2013 for rewritable discs. Ongoing development is under way to create a 1 TB Blu-ray disc as soon as 2013.[92]."

  2. Re:the good old days of data storage by cbelt3 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    NOT an urban legend. Happened to me with a 550 card program at Mizzou in 1975. I was running through the halls to go get it punched on the auto-collator (I think that's what it was called- a machine that punched the extra columns on the right (73 through 80) in sequence so you could resort the cards. And I tripped, and the cards went flying.

    Fortunately I had a printout because I'd just run the program, so I just went back and keypunched the whole damn thing. And left the cards in the hall. I was a faster typist than a sorter.

  3. Re:to Blu-ray by timeOday · · Score: 4, Interesting
    But paying a few hundred bucks for a hard drive was normal then, too, and now it's not.

    And when data CDs first came out (mid-80s), they stored several times more than a high-end hard drive. Somewhere along the way, optical media fell far, far behind.