Happy 50th Birthday, Hard Drive!

by EdgeLink on Sep 15, 2006 in Uncategorized

The hard drive has become an important part of our modern computing lives. We see them in our PCs, MP3 players, and the new generation of flash drives fit in our pockets as easy as a pack of gum.

The very first hard drive was introduced by IBM on September 13, 1956. Dubbed the RAMAC 305 (Random Access Method of Accounting and Control) it was about the size of two refrigerators, and was made up of fifty 24 inch platters which stored a grand total of about 5 megabytes. At a cost of over $10,000 per megabyte, it wouldn’t exactly be the ideal home computer!

To put that in perspective, a single 1” drive found in today’s MP3 players can hold more 100 times the memory at pennies per megabyte! Happy Birthday Hard Drive! You’ve come a long, long way!