Monday, December 22, 2014

Disk / Storage Timeline

First cut at timeline of significant events in Disk and Storage, ignoring "historical" devices like floppies and bubble memory. Edward Grochowski's 2012 "Flash Memory Summit" talk tracks multiple storage capacity, price & technology from 1990.

First commercial computers were built  in 1950 and 1951: LEO[UK], Zuse[DE] and UNIVAC[US].
LEO claim the first working Application in 1951.
 [1949: BINAC built by the Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation for Northrup]

Ignored technologies include:
Tapes: used in the first computers as large, cheap linear access storage.
Drums: in use a little later and continued for some time, often in specialist roles (paging).