A 5MB Hard Drive In 1956 Weighed A Ton -- Now That's Perspective

Hah, now that IS amazing.

Just look at how proud also those folks staring at it are too. Amazing how small technology has become in just 50ish years. I bet the thing cost an arm and a leg too.

Yeah look what it took to move it too. That would suck to take on a business trip lol .

It's always amazing to see how far technology has progressed, from big bulky boxes to beige cases to sleek modern machines. It seems like technology changes almost every decade.

Makes me think about what's going to come next in the future.

"We can laugh at the past, but the past has the last laugh when the future surprises us." - eunoia

Happy 2012!

haha, i have a few in my basement powering my computer right now ;) :P

I gotta get me one of those! 

I worked in a very large computer room at Rockwell International many years ago.

You had to wear thermal underwear, gloves, and a coat in there because the room was kept so damn cold with multiple giant AC units under the floors and in the ceilings. They used huge magnetic tapes and stacks of punch cards to transfer data around. They generated these gigantic reports printed with dot matrix printers on connected accordion paper that had to be delivered to everyone as soon as the "run" was done.

But the pay was fantastic and the hours were good too.

realneil:

You had to wear thermal underwear

Sounds fun! lol

That is absolutely impressive! (the picture) and the thermal clothing you had to wear.

The mainframe was huge and covered several rooms. It put out a lot of heat and was susceptible to too much heat. So it had to be cooled down.

They knew that we could dress for the occasion when we were in there, so we adapted and got to keep on making that wazoo paycheck.

Technology is crazy. I'm only 20 but I've heard so many stories about 1 super computer taking up an entire room. Now we have servers that hold billions of data. I love it.

I remember when my wife would have to go up the school at midnight to check on the transfer to the District office. And to cehck on the printouts of all the data on the dot matrix printers with connected accordion paper and paper had jammed and broke. She would have to hang the phone up and redial it to start over. Now that kind of transfer take several minutes instead of 6 hours. I do miss the sound of the modem trying to connect. LOL

eunoia:

"We can laugh at the past, but the past has the last laugh when the future surprises us." - eunoia

Happy 2012!

To repeat: "We can laugh at the past, but the past has the last laugh when the future surprises us." - eunoia

http://www.dialupsound.com/

How many times I sat and listened to that crap, hoping it would work properly,.........