Modern technology 1956 style.

[billofdurham]

As we have come to accept computers as being an essential tool for everything from sending mail to repairing our cars and have seen great advances in recent years in making them smaller, I thought you may be interested in what was about when I was a youngster.

IMPRESSIVE BIT OF TECHNOLOGY FROM WAY BACK WHEN.

Guess What This Is?

Hint: picture was taken in 1956...

1956 HDD.jpg (46.62 KiB) Viewed 510 times

It's a hard disk drive ... with 5 MB of storage. In September 1956 IBM launched the 305 RAMAC, the first 'SUPER' computer with a hard disk drive. It weighed over a ton and stored a 'whopping' 5 MB of data.

I bet you appreciate your 1 GB memory stick a little more now?

Bill.

[matthew1]

I love this stuff, Bill. I wonder if those are the actual hard drive data platters we can see inside the device?

For a little over $200 I can buy myself four terrabytes of storage (two 2TB drives), which is one hundred thousand times more storage than my first computer had (40MB Mac LC).

[billofdurham]

In 1961, whilst working for a government department, I spent some time in the new computer section supervising the ladies who were doing the data processing. The computer was housed in four large rooms and we were in one adjoining room of the same size. Our room was big enough to house all 80 of us so you can imagine the size of the computer. If we had to enter the computer suite we had to wear sterile clothing. I have no doubt the newest one will be about the same size as a suitcase, be goodness knows how much more powerful and would be out of date the day it was installed.

So ends another stroll down memory lane!!

Bill.

[jblackburn]

For the longest time, my dad had an ancient Texas Instruments computer about half the size of our garage freezer in our garage. I remember him firing it up only once - it took a 240V plug like a dryer, and took about 30 minutes to get up and running. At that point, it was just basic DOS commands and an inventory program that was run on it for the Pharmacy department.

I have no idea how old the thing was - I would guess sometime in the 70's, but it must have weighed like 400 pounds when we finally hauled it off to the dump. It was stuffed with circuit boards the length of my entire laptop, most of them containing only 1 or 2 chips.
At the time we got rid of a whole bunch of others:

There's a 286, 386, and a few 486's in that pile

old computers!.jpg (34.99 KiB) Viewed 492 times

Pretty incredible how far technology has gone. I'm still blown away when I see how small storage has gotten when entire 5 1/4" hard drives used to hold only 40MB (these come in 16gb varieties now the size of the tip of my finger):

Am I the only one that enjoys watching 80's movies and laughing at the primitive technology (and weird hairstyles?)

[billofdurham]

Am I the only one that enjoys watching 80's movies and laughing at the primitive technology (and weird hairstyles?)

The 80s? That's too modern. Try the 50s and 60s. We didn't even have calculators then, but I was a wizard on the Abacus and could work wonders with a slide rule.

Bill.