Evolution of Data Storage
The evolution of storing data goes back to punch cards. Punch cards are paper cards where holes are punched by hand or by machine to represent data. The standard punch card was invented by Herman Hollerith. It was first used by the New York City Board of Health for vital statistics tabulation and was further used in the 1890 census. It was the first mechanical storage method that could hold around eighty characters, since the tabulation machines were used to punch the tapes to count large datasets, the US census was completed way ahead of time. However, it does not hold a lot of data. It held less than a tenth of a kilobyte meaning that 28 billion punch cards would be required to match the capacity of 2 terabytes of the modern hard drive.
In the year 1932, the magnetic drum was invented by Gustav Tauschek and was used by US Navy during World War 2. It was a storage device that was used in early computers as memory. It is a metal cylinder coated with magnetic iron-oxide material where data is stored in the magnetic polarities. The magnetic drum was large cylinders where the data was written on the outside like a modern hard drive but it had read/write heads but these were stationary instead. The drum spun around at high speeds while the head waited for the relevant piece of data to come around. Although they could store a lot more data than old punch cards. Their capacity was still pretty tiny by modern standards. Only a few kilobytes each.
Source: https://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/memory-storage/8/252
In 1947, the world saw its first form of random access memory (RAM) known as Williams Kilburn tube that could store 0.128kb of data. However, one would need 72 of the tube to store a single jpg image.
Source: https://twitter.com/fermatslibrary/status/811602889177268224
In 1952 magnetic tape drive was invented. It could store 231kb of data. It was a storage device that was a 1200 foot roll of tape which could store 10 pdfs or 23 formatted .docs files. In the same year, Magnetic core also made its presence, it could store around 2kb of data, it was the first core memory that was used in a computer and it is roughly the size of a small png image.
Source: https://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/definition/magnetic-tape
The tape was still and is great for cheap data storage in bulk but with slow access times resulting from having to constantly wind the tape back and forth. A quicker solution was needed as computers became more powerful. In the 1940s cathode ray tubes were introduced to store data. A cathode-ray tube (CRT) uses electrons to produce an image on a screen. However, core memory quickly became much more popular due to its lower cost which we today refer to as RAM unlike earlier forms of magnetic storage core memory did not have any moving parts making it much quicker.
The familiar hard disk drive (HDD) was introduced in 1956 by IBM. It could store 3750kb of data but it was 50 feet tall and contained 50 platters but later IBM introduced a model with one head per platter to speed up access times but still they were still no solution for portable data until the floppy disk appeared on the scene in 1967.
Source:https://www.britannica.com/technology/hard-disk
In 1967 floppy disk made its presence. It could store 80kb of data. The floppy disk was developed at IBM’s San Jose Laboratory and it could hold 8 formatted .doc files. Although it did use magnetic storage technology like hard drives, their small size and light weight made them very useful for relatively small programs and files that were common in that day.
Source:https://www.easytechjunkie.com/what-are-floppy-disks.htm
Although floppy disk drives by now were the smallest storage device made which could hold 80kb of data, the release of the compact disc (CD) in 1982 developed by Sony and Phillips could hold 7,00,000kb of data. Moreover, it could hold 140 minutes of low-resolution video. In the year 1994 Zip drive made its presence. It was developed by Iomega and could hold 1,00,000kb of data. The first zip drive could hold about 100 minutes of MP3 audio. This innovation shut the sales of floppies. The 90s saw a rise in many technologies. In 1995 DVD was developed by Sony and Phillips. It could hold 1,460,000kb of data. Without much delay, in 1999 Sandisk, Panasonic and Toshiba came up with an SD card that could hold 64,000 kb of data and around 50 photos. In the same year, the USB flash drive also made its presence, it could store 8000kb of data and the first flash drive could hold 90 seconds of low-resolution video.
We now have multiple terabyte SSDs and SD cards that can store gigabytes of data. One would need over seven billion standards punched cards to match the SD card.
In 2003 Sony cranked up Blue Ray’s optical disc storage to 3.3 terabytes. The Blu-ray Disc (BD), is a digital optical disc storage format that is capable of storing several hours of high-definition video.
From 2006 To Today Cloud data Storage/cloud computing took the market. There is no limit to storage in cloud computing. The storage capacity depends only on the plan you can pay for.
Source: https://www.business-ideas.club/cloud-computing/
We generate approximately 2.5 quintillion bytes of new data everyday. That number is only going up, which means we’ll need a lot more data storage in the future.
These technologies today
Today, hardly people know about punch cards, magnetic drum or the Williams Kilburn tube. These technologies definitely did start a history but they are all the topics of the past. Technologies such as magnetic drum magnetic tape drive are bulky as compared to flash drive or the SD drive.
Technology has evolved the way we live our lives. Technology has also made a huge impact in many sectors such as education, manufacturing, industrial, tourism sectors along with agriculture and retail sectors. Technology such as artificial intelligence and cloud computing has revolutionized the world.