Hard drives: history of

In May, 1955, a small IBM branch based in San Jose, CA, took the computer market by surprise with a product that offered unprecedented storage capabilities for a computer. The RAMAC, or random-access method of accounting and control, Was larger than two refrigerators. It was capable of storing 5 million characters (Not Bytes, which are 8-bit, these characters were 7-bit.) on 50, 2” aluminum disks. The IBM RAMAC was the beginning of a still growing Hard Drive industry.

In San Jose, CA, Reynold B. Johnson ran a bootleg project using IBM facilities and funds to produce what was considered a unrealistic, non-profit, product. The Hard Drive. San

. . .

View the whole essay, without interruption

Johnson and told him that 45 years later he could hold a hard disk that could store more than 100 gigabytes, or 100 Billion bytes, in his hand, he probably would have laughed. Jose, a good 12 hours away from IBM’s east coast headquarters, was left isolated and relatively untouched.

Johnson had decided to concentrate on disks, which everybody considered an enormous problem. Management did not often oversee the facilities, leaving Johnson and his staff free to work on their “pet” project. When Headquarters did find out, management sent stern warnings to stop work on the hard disk due to “budget difficulties. He took with him some 200 IBM employees. started work on disk drives, built their first in 1960. 1956, Midwestern bought out Data Storage Devices and Magnecord, producing the M-3000.

Since these breakthroughs, the hard drive has soared in storage capacity, and decreased in size.

The RAMAC may have been the first disk drive, but it was far from the last. Nor was IBM the only business producing them.

Approximate Word count = 461
Approximate Pages = 2 (250 words per page double spaced)

Simply subscribe to view this paper, and 100,000 others.