TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Re: Apple Computer 30th Birthday

Re: Apple Computer 30th Birthday

hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com
7 Apr 2006 08:41:59 -0700

> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Lisa, we _need_ a good article on
> disk drives for our archives in the history section. Would you
> mind preparing one I could keep on file here? PAT]

Yes, I'm trying to put something together in time for the annivesary.
I don't know if IBM is doing anything or not.

In short:

In the early 1950s Tom Watson Jr, now president of IBM, wanted to
attract promising college grads from the west coast, but they weren't
interested in coming east. So he established a new IBM library in San
Diego. Previously IBM facilities was mostly in the NY state area
based on train travel. Watson Jr was very much into aviation, being a
WW II air corp pilot.

IBM recognized it needed a random access memory instead of just tape.
The mag drum of the time was too small. They developed the disk
drive. They had to invent a very flat surface, even dispersal of mag
coating, a disk arm mechanism, a disk read write head, a way to ensure
the thing would fall down on the platter yet stay close enough to
read/write; and a way to randomize records.

It was announced as a product in Sept 1956. For such a momentus
product, the business and trade press of the day were largely silent,
just a minor few lines mentioned IBM announced some new products.

The earliest disk drive held only 5 meg--5 million characters. Then
they got it up to 50. The disk was HUGE and part of a bigger machine.
It was very expensive.

It some years to get the cost down and space up, and then disks was
available in other products. But for many years tape was the way to
go. Even the early PCs had provision to connect a tape drive
(actually an ordinary audio cassette recorder) for lowcost storage,
but soon disks got so cheap it wasn't needed and tape was too slow.

The IBM history web page, on their site, has more information.

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