# data[].attributes.body
non-volatile memory hardware device controlling the positioning, reading, writing of the hard disk, which furnishes data storage. it stores OS, programs and files and was created by Jacob Rabinow in 1956

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A computer hard disk drive (HDD) is a non-volatile memory hardware device that controls the positioning, reading and writing of the hard disk, which furnishes data storage. Hard disk drives are commonly used as the main storage device in a computer. HDDs often store operating system, software programs and other files, and can be found in desktop computers, mobile devices, consumer electronics and enterprise storage arrays in data centers.

A hard disk drive -- often shortened to hard drive -- and hard disk are not the same things, but they are packaged as a unit and either term can refer to the whole unit.
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In a computer, an HDD is commonly found in the drive bay and is connected to the motherboard via an ATA, SATA or SCSI cable. The HDD is also connected to a power supply unit and can keep stored data while powered down.

Hard disk drive components and how it works

Most basic hard drives consist of a number of disk platters that are positioned around a spindle inside a sealed chamber. The chamber also includes read-and-write heads and motors.

The motor is used to spin the platters, which hold the data, at up to 15,000 rotations per minute (a higher rpm number results in faster performance). As the platters spin, a second motor controls the position of the read-and-write heads that magnetically record information to, and read information from, tracks on each platter.

External HDDs

Most HDDs are found internally in a computer and work as stated above. However, individuals can also purchase external hard drives. External hard drives can be used to expand the storage capacity, or act as a portable place to back data up to. An external hard drive can connect to a computer or device through a USB 2.0 interface or with eSATA. External hard drives may also have slower data transfer rates compared to internal HDDs.

History of hard disk drives

The hard disk was created in 1953 by engineers at IBM who wanted to find a way to provide random access to high capacities of data at a low cost. The disk drives developed were the size of refrigerators, could store 3.75 megabytes of data and began shipping in 1956. Memorex, Seagate and Western Digital were other early vendors of hard disk drive technology.

Hard disk drive form-factor size has continued to decrease as the technology evolves. By the mid-1980s, 3.5-inch and 2.5-inch form factors were introduced, and it was at this time they first became a standard in personal computers ( PCs).

Hard disk drive density has increased since the technology was first developed. The first hard disk drives were able to store megabytes of data, while today they are in the terabyte ( TB) range. Hitachi released the first 1 TB hard drives in 2007. In 2015, HGST announced the first 10 TB hard drive.

HDD technology developments

In 2013, Seagate announced hard disk drives that use shingled magnetic recording ( SMR) technology. SMR increases storage density in hard disk drives by layering the magnetic tracks on each disk, rather than placing them parallel to each other. It is referred to as shingled because the tracks overlap similar to shingles on a roof.

Hard disk drive components

HGST announced the first helium-filled hard disk drive in 2012. Helium is less dense, cooler and lighter than air, and can, therefore, consume less power, increase drive density and improve performance compared with traditional hard disk drives. In 2016, Seagate announced its own 10 TB helium hard drive.

HDD vs. SSD

The main alternative to hard disk drives in PCs and the enterprise are solid-state drives ( SSDs). HDDs are now starting to be replaced by SSDs.

Unlike hard disks, SSDs contain no moving parts. SSDs also have lower latency than HDDs, and therefore are often favored to store critical data that needs to be accessed quickly and for applications with a high input/output demand. SSDs are configured to deliver high read and write performance for sequential and random data requests. Additionally, SSDs don't store data magnetically, so the read performance remains steady, regardless of where the data is stored on the drive.

However, SSDs are more expensive than HDDs from a price-per- gigabyte standpoint. Many enterprise storage arrays ship with a mix of HDDs and SSDs to reduce costs while providing better performance. SSDs also have a set life expectancy, having a finite number of write cycles before performance slows. This detrition happens faster than how long it takes for an HDD to fail over time.

Continue Reading About hard disk drive (HDD)

Dig Deeper on SAN technology and arrays

Margaret Rouse asks:

What benefits or drawbacks do you find with hard drives vs. solid-state drives?

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What is Hard Disk Drive (HDD)? A definition from WhatIs.com

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A computer hard disk drive (HDD) is a non-volatile memory hardware device that controls the positioning, reading and writing of the hard disk, which furnishes data storage. Hard disk drives are commonly used as the main storage device in a computer.

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These scrolls had to be punched in a certain order for each song.  This technology was first developed by Melville Clark in 1901.

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The Punch Card is a form of storing data on a sheet of paper using numbers all over the sheet to record small amounts of data. The Punch Card usually does not store much data and so it comes with many papers for certain programs.
https://www.computerhope.com/jargon/p/punccard.htm#punch-card

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The IBM 305 was the first magnetic disk for storing data. It can hold 5 megabytes of data

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this is a memory chip created by Bob Dennard for the soul purpose to store more memory. This was created in 1966

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to access the data on a diskette you put it in the player and it spins like a record and the heads move to the correct track diskettes were made in 1971 making them electronics.

https://www.google.com/search?q=how+do+diskettes+work&rlz=1C1GCEV_enCA919CA919&oq=how+do+diskettes+work&aqs=chrome..69i57j0.8365j1j15&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

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dram stands for dynamic random- access memory.  it takes every little bit of data and stores it in each memory cell

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001 94v m1 94v 0 lgs lgs gm71c4403cj60 pc2 6400 ebay ram module non ecc ddr2 memory modules

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The IBM 305 was the first magnetic disk for storing data. It can hold 5 megabytes of data .

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The Petroglyphs are a form of prehistoric (290,000-4,000 BCE)  rock art, engraving and carvings. Because of the size and depth of  these engravings we can still see the different messages and thoughts our past has tried to show us. http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/prehistoric/petroglyphs.htm

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its smaller version of a floppy disk and holds less data on it.

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old medium stock vector rectangular plastic plastic enclosure disk storage flexible magnetic retro computers vector illustration dreamstime stock illustration

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This CD drive stores information using lasers

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Floppy disk is a lot like a cassette tape but it's flat and round. It uses iron bits to store information.

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This was a Egyptian writing system that consists of  characters and picture drawn into the rock/pyramids for others to discover later on.

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This is a electronic.

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MICROTEST 2943-4000-02 DISCPORT NETWORK CONNECTOR | eBay

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DISCPORT NETWORK CONNECTOR. Note, picture is of actual item. What you see is what you get . Bankers Draft. IT Computer Spares. Credit or Debit Cards.

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Cave painting was considered to have some sort of symbolic or religious function. The cave paintings consisted of black and red paint which would be applied with their finger or a flint tool. They used this as a way to send others souls to the other world.

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Scrolls are storage devices that mostly use paper or parchment to store information, but some scrolls made of metal have been found, most notably the Copper Scroll.  The Copper Scroll lists locations where treasures were buried.  Although this is in the prehistoric section, some scrolls dating from the 1600s to the 1880s have also been found.

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When Mount Vesuvius erupted in AD79 it destroyed the towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum, their inhabitants and their prized possessions - among them a fine library of scrolls that were carbonised by the searing heat of ash and gas.

But scientists say there may still be hope that the fragile documents can once more be read thanks to an innovative approach involving high-energy x-rays and artificial intelligence.

"Although you can see on every flake of papyrus that there is writing, to open it up would require that papyrus to be really limber and flexible - and it is not any more," said Prof Brent Seales, chair of computer science at the University of Kentucky, who is leading the research.

The two unopened scrolls that will be probed belong to the Institut de France in Paris and are part of an astonishing collection of about 1,800 scrolls that was first discovered in 1752 during excavations of Herculaneum. Together they make up the only known intact library from antiquity, with the majority of the collection now preserved in a museum in Naples.

The villa in which they were found is thought to have been owned by the father-in-law of Julius Caesar, the Roman dictator who was assassinated in 44BC.

Experts have attempted to unroll about half of the scrolls through various methods over the years, although some have been destroyed in the process and experts say unrolling and exposing the writing to the air results in the ink fading.

Seales and his team have previously used high-energy x-rays to "virtually unravel" a 1,700 year old Hebrew parchment found in the holy ark of a synagogue in En-Gedi in Israel, revealing it to contain text from the biblical book of Leviticus.

However, while the En-Gedi scroll contained a metal-based ink which shows up in x-ray data, the inks used on the Herculaneum scrolls are thought to be carbon-based, made using charcoal or soot, meaning there is no obvious contrast between the writing and the papyrus in x-ray scans.

While ink in some Herculaneum fragments has been found to contain lead, Seales says it is only trace amounts and does not allow the inside of the scrolls to be read using x-ray data alone. Seales says it has also proved impossible to replicate findings that letters within Herculaneum scrolls can be deciphered by the naked eye from scans captured by a slightly different x-ray technique.

As a result the team have come up with a new approach that uses high-energy x-rays together with a type of artificial intelligence known as machine learning.

The method uses photographs of scroll fragments with writing visible to the naked eye. These are used to teach machine learning algorithms where ink is expected to be in x-ray scans of the same fragments, collected using a number of techniques.

The idea is that the system will pick out and learn subtle differences between inked and blank areas in the x-ray scans, such as differences in the structure of papyrus fibres. Once trained on the fragments, it is hoped the system can be used with data from the intact scrolls to reveal the text within.

Seales said the team have just finished collecting the x-ray data and are training their algorithms, adding that they will apply the system on the scrolls in the coming months.

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The team taking on the task of reading the scrolls. Left to right: Front row - Jens Dopke, Brent Seales, Francoise Berard, and Christy Chapman; Back Row - Robert Atwood and Thomas Connolley. Photograph: Diamond Light Source Ltd

"The first thing we are hoping to do is perfect the technology so that we can simply repeat it on all 900 scrolls that remain [unwrapped]," said Seales.

As for what the scrolls contain, the researchers say they are excited.

"For the most part the writings [in opened scrolls] are Greek philosophy around Epicureanism, which was a prevailing philosophy of the day," said Seales.

Another possibility is that the scrolls might contain Latin text. While classical libraries are believed to have had a Greek section and a Latin section, only a small proportion of scrolls from Herculaneum have so far been found to be in Latin, with the possibility there is a Latin section within the villa yet to be excavated.

Dr Dirk Obbink, a papyrologist and classicist at the University of Oxford who has been involved in training the team's algorithms, said the project was immensely exciting and agreed it is possible the text might turn out to be Latin. "A new historical work by Seneca the Elder was discovered among the unidentified Herculaneum papyri only last year, thus showing what uncontemplated rarities remain to be discovered there," he said,

But Obbink is hoping the scrolls might even contain lost works, such as poems by Sappho or the treatise Mark Antony wrote on his own drunkenness. "I would very much like to be able to read that one," he said.
Topics

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Ancient scrolls charred by Vesuvius could be read once again

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When Mount Vesuvius erupted in AD79 it destroyed the towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum, their inhabitants and their prized possessions - among them a fine library of scrolls that were carbonised by the searing heat of ash and gas.

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storage device made of stone

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the first was dated back around 2100 BC. The first books were written on clay tablets..

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gilgamesh homer british museum irving finkel plimpton 322 greek assyrian ancient scripts ashurbanipal ancient greek

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Cave drawings were used in the prehistoric times by people. they were used to store information and make plans for things

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lascaux ancient prehistoric art paleolithic lascaux cave horse ancient cave prehistoric cave stone age cave art

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it would play music stored in the pins placed on the cylinder that would pluck the metal tongs that would make sounds.

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music box, also called musical box, mechanical musical instrument that is sounded when tuned metal prongs, or teeth, mounted in a line on a flat comb are made to vibrate by contact with a revolving cylinder or disc that is driven by a clockwork mechanism. As the cylinder or disc revolves, small pin…

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Weaving is a textile production with two sets of yarn or string interlaced into patterns. They use these patterns to tell stories and recreate places they've been in the design.

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People recorded musical notations on paper

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also stores data

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these are a form of information storage that was used by ancient Greeks made out of wax and then engraved information on the tablet

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The Guttenburg Bible was the first of its kind made in Europe in 1455 AD  it was the first major book to be printed by the movable printing press. It then started the Guttenburg revolution and the printed book.
https://sfbook.com/the-evolution-of-the-book.htm

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the pcjr exposes a pair of cartridge slots in which the user can insert software on ROM cartridges

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The AXIS StorPoint cd allows you to effortlessly share cd-roms over networks regardless of system or speed. Since the start in 1984, it has been one of the fastest growing companies in the market and is now a leader in its field.

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Long strips of paper that had holes in it which where used to send telegrams to send messages

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Punched tape consistsof a long strip of paper in which holes are punched to store data.

The earliest forms of punched tape come from weaving looms and embroidery, where cards with simple instructions about a machine's intended movements were first fed individually as instructions, then controlled by instruction cards, and later were fed as a string of connected cards.

This led to the concept of communicating data not as a stream of individual cards, but one "continuous card", or a tape. Many professional embroidery operations still refer to those individuals who create the designs and machine patterns as "punchers", even though punched cards and paper tape were eventually phased out, after many years of use, in the 1990s.

In 1846 Alexander Bain used punched tape to send telegrams.

References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punched_tape
http://hopl.murdoch.edu.au/images/people/

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Sabrina Schönhart, Armin Müller, Laszlo Böszörmenyi, Stefan Podlipnig

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Punched tape consistsof a long strip of paper in which holes are punched to store data. The earliest forms of punched tape come from weaving looms and embroidery, where cards with simple instructions about a machine's intended movements were first fed individually as instructions, then controlled by instruction cards, and later were fed as a string of connected cards.

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can store data, if you have a CD you can burn files onto the CD through the file explorer

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The abacus in a counting frame used to count in  Europe, China, and Russia.

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people would use rocks to write on to store information for future reference

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The mailing system was invented during the 1653. You write on a piece of paper them you send it to a friend or family member.

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letters mail when were they invented - Google Search

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merge envelope mail merge snail sakk chain letters santa claus censorship snail mail air mail dead letter

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a hard disk drive is an electro mechanical drive that uses magnetic storage to store and retrieve digital data.

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Store digital information using digital recordings. Invented in 1928.

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a tape holds movies and music

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A tape drive is a data storage device that reads and writes data on a magnetic tape. Magnetic tape data storage is typically used for offline, archival data storage. Tape media generally has a favorable unit cost and a long archival stability.

A tape drive provides sequential access storage, unlike a hard disk drive, which provides direct access storage. A disk drive can move to any position on the disk in a few milliseconds, but a tape drive must physically wind tape between reels to read any one particular piece of data. As a result, tape drives have very large average access times. However, tape drives can stream data very quickly off a tape when the required position has been reached. For example, as of 2010 Linear Tape-Open (LTO) supported continuous data transfer rates of up to 140 MB/s, a rate comparable to hard disk drives.

Magnetic tape drives with capacities less than one megabyte were first used for data storage on mainframe computers in the 1950s. As of 2014, capacities of 10 terabytes or higher of uncompressed data per cartridge were available.

In early computer systems, magnetic tape served as the main storage medium because although the drives were expensive, the tapes were inexpensive. Some computer systems ran the operating system on tape drives such as DECtape. DECtape had fixed-size indexed blocks that could be rewritten without disturbing other blocks, so DECtape could be used like a slow disk drive.

Data tape drives may use advanced data integrity techniques such as multilevel forward error correction, shingling, and linear serpentine layout for writing data to tape.

Tape drives can be connected to a computer with SCSI, Fibre Channel, SATA, USB, FireWire, FICON, or other interfaces. Tape drives are used with autoloaders and tape libraries which automatically load, unload, and store multiple tapes, increasing the volume of data which can be stored without manual intervention.

In the early days of home computing, floppy and hard disk drives were very expensive. Many computers had an interface to store data via an audio tape recorder, typically on Compact Cassettes. Simple dedicated tape drives, such as the professional DECtape and the home ZX Microdrive and Rotronics Wafadrive, were also designed for inexpensive data storage. However, the drop in disk drive prices made such alternatives obsolete.

Data compression

As some data can be compressed to a smaller size than the original files, it has become commonplace when marketing tape drives to state the capacity with the assumption of a 2:1 compression ratio; thus a tape with a capacity of 80 GB would be sold as "80/160". The true storage capacity is also known as the native capacity or the raw capacity. The compression ratio actually achievable depends on the data being compressed. Some data has little redundancy; large video files, for example, already use compression and cannot be compressed further. A database with repetitive entries, on the other hand, may allow compression ratios better than 10:1.

Technical limitations

A disadvantageous effect termed shoe-shining occurs during read/write if the data transfer rate falls below the minimum threshold at which the tape drive heads were designed to transfer data to or from a continuously running tape. In this situation, the modern fast-running tape drive is unable to stop the tape instantly. Instead, the drive must decelerate and stop the tape, rewind it a short distance, restart it, position back to the point at which streaming stopped and then resume the operation. If the condition repeats, the resulting back-and-forth tape motion resembles that of shining shoes with a cloth. Shoe-shining decreases the attainable data transfer rate, drive and tape life, and tape capacity.

In early tape drives, non-continuous data transfer was normal and unavoidable. Computer processing power and available memory were usually insufficient to provide a constant stream, so tape drives were typically designed for start-stop operation. Early drives used very large spools, which necessarily had high inertia and did not start and stop moving easily. To provide high start, stop and seek performance, several feet of loose tape was played out and pulled by a suction fan down into two deep open channels on either side of the tape head and capstans. The long thin loops of tape hanging in these vacuum columns had far less inertia than the two reels and could be rapidly started, stopped and repositioned. The large reels would move as required to keep the slack tape in the vacuum columns.

Later, most tape drives of the 1980s introduced the use of an internal data buffer to somewhat reduce start-stop situations. These drives are often referred to as tape streamers. The tape was stopped only when the buffer contained no data to be written, or when it was full of data during reading. As faster tape drives became available, despite being buffered, the drives started to suffer from the shoe-shining sequence of stop, rewind, start.

Most recently, drives no longer operate at a single fixed linear speed, but have several speeds. Internally, they implement algorithms that dynamically match the tape speed level to the computer's data rate. Example speed levels could be 50 percent, 75 percent and 100 percent of full speed. A computer that streams data slower than the lowest speed level (e.g. at 49 percent) will still cause shoe-shining.

Magnetic tape is commonly housed in a casing known as a cassette or cartridge-for example, the 4-track cartridge and the Compact Cassette. The cassette contains magnetic tape to provide different audio content using the same player. The outer shell, made of plastic, sometimes with metal plates and parts, permits ease of handling of the fragile tape, making it far more convenient and robust than having spools of exposed tape. Simple analog cassette audio tape recorders were commonly used for data storage and distribution on home computers at a time when floppy disk drives were very expensive. The Commodore Datasette was a dedicated data version using the same media.

Manufacturers often specify the capacity of tapes using data compression techniques; compressibility varies for different data (commonly 2:1 to 8:1), and the specified capacity may not be attained for some types of real data. As of 2014, tape drives capable of higher capacity were still being developed.

In 2011, Fujifilm and IBM announced that they had been able to record 29.5 billion bits per square inch with magnetic tape media developed using the BaFe particles and nanotechnologies, allowing drives with true (uncompressed) tape capacity of 35 TB. The technology was not expected to be commercially available for at least a decade.

In 2014, Sony and IBM announced that they had been able to record 148 gigabits per square inch with magnetic tape media developed using a new vacuum thin-film forming technology able to form extremely fine crystal particles, allowing true tape capacity of 185 TB.

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A tape drive is a data storage device that reads and writes data on a magnetic tape. Magnetic tape data storage is typically used for offline, archival data storage. Tape media generally has a favorable unit cost and a long archival stability.

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was invented in 1932 for the main memory of computers and had a capacity of 10kb

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Nowadays we are used to having hundreds of gigabytes of storage capacity in our computers. This was pure science fiction only a few decades ago. For example, the first hard disk drive to have gigabyte capacity was as big as a refrigerator, and that was in 1980. Not so long ago!

Pingdom stores a lot of monitoring data every single day, and considering how much we take today's storage capacity for granted, it's interesting to look back and put things into perspective. Here is a look back at some interesting storage devices from the early computer era.

The Selectron Tube

The Selectron tube had a capacity of 256 to 4096 bits (32 to 512 bytes). The 4096-bit Selectron was 10 inches long and 3 inches wide. Originally developed in 1946, the memory storage device proved expensive and suffered from production problems, so it never became a success.

Above: The 1024-bit Selectron.

Punch Cards

Early computers often used punch cards for input both of programs and data. Punch cards were in common use until the mid-1970s. It should be noted that the use of punch cards predates computers. They were used as early as 1725 in the textile industry (for controlling mechanized textile looms).

Above: Card from a Fortran program: Z(1) = Y + W(1)

Punched Tape

Same as with punch cards, punched tape was originally pioneered by the textile industry for use with mechanized looms. For computers, punch tape could be used for data input but also as a medium to output data. Each row on the tape represented one character.

Above: 8-level punch tape (8 holes per row).

Magnetic Drum Memory

Invented all the way back in 1932 (in Austria), it was widely used in the 1950s and 60s as the main working memory of computers. In the mid-1950s, magnetic drum memory had a capacity of around 10 kB.

The Hard Disk Drive

The first hard disk drive was the IBM Model 350 Disk File that came with the IBM 305 RAMAC computer in 1956. It had 50 24-inch discs with a total storage capacity of 5 million characters (just under 5 MB).

Above: IBM Model 350, the first-ever hard disk drive.

The first hard drive to have more than 1 GB in capacity was the IBM 3380 in 1980 (it could store 2.52 GB). It was the size of a refrigerator, weighed 550 pounds (250 kg), and the price when it was introduced ranged from $81,000 to $142,400.

A hard disk drive called SyQuest was targeted for personal computers, and for many years had no relevant competition in terms of transferring large desktop publisher documents. The first SyQuest SQ306RD introduced in 1983 had endless (at the time) 5MB hard drive for most of the available data types, also audio and video. In 1986, a 44 MB SQ555 and SQ400 were available on the market.
Above: Removable hard disk SyQuest 44 MB.
The Laserdisc

We mention it here mainly because it was the precursor to the CD-ROM and other optical storage solutions. It was mainly used for movies. The first commercially available laserdisc system was available on the market late in 1978 (then called Laser Videodisc and the more funkily branded DiscoVision) and were 11.81 inches (30 cm) in diameter. The discs could have up to 60 minutes of audio/video on each side. The first laserdiscs had entirely analog content. The basic technology behind laserdiscs was invented all the way back in 1958.

The Floppy Disc

The diskette, or floppy disk (named so because they were flexible), was invented by IBM and in common use from the mid-1970s to the late 1990s. The first floppy disks were 8 inches, and later in came 5.25 and 3.5-inch formats. The first floppy disk, introduced in 1971, had a capacity of 79.7 kB, and was read-only. A read-write version came a year later.

Magnetic Tape

Magnetic tape was first used for data storage in 1951. The tape device was called UNISERVO and was the main I/O device on the UNIVAC I computer. The effective transfer rate for the UNISERVO was about 7,200 characters per second. The tapes were metal and 1200 feet long (365 meters) and therefore very heavy.

And of course, we can't mention magnetic tape without also mentioning the standard compact cassette, which was a popular way of data storage for personal computers in the late 70s and 80s. Typical data rates for compact cassettes were 2,000 bit/s. You could store about 660 kB per side on a 90-minute tape.

DECtape
Above left: Dual DECtape unit for a DEC PDP-11. Above right: DECtape removable magnetic media.
DECtape was a magnetic data storage introduced in 1963 used mainly with Digital Equipment Corporation computers. It was designed to be durable and reliable enough to act as a computer's operating system main storage medium. The tape was 0.75 in (19 mm) wide and was accommodating 6 data tracks which were paired with non-adjacent tracks. It could have been written/read in any direction, and it was almost error-proof. The DECtape was used on Digital Equipment's PDP-series of mainframes and minicomputers, and each tape could store 184K 12-bit PDP-8 words or 144K 18-bit words.

There are so many interesting pictures from "the good old days" when you look around on the web. These were some of the best we could find, and we hope you liked them.
The Selectron. The punch card. The punch card reader and writer. Punched tape 1 and 2. UNIVAC magnetic drum. IBM 650 computer magnetic drum. The IBM Model 350 Disk File. 250 MB hard drisk drive from 1979. The IBM 3380. Laserdisc vs DVD. Held Laserdisc. 8-inch floppy drive. 8-inch floppy in use. UNISERVO and UNIVAC I. The IBM 3410. The compact cassette. The Datassette, SyQuest, TU56DECtape, DECtape I and II. And as always, Wikipedia was a great source for checking out the actual facts. EDIT: We removed the comment about the Commodore Datassette sound, since it was a factual error. We also removed this: "(For those who weren't there, you could hear the sound of the data being read as a high-pitched, screechy sound while you were loading your programs.)" We also went with some of the comment suggestions and decided to add paragraphs regarding the SyQuest and DECtape.
If you are interested in the history of computer science, you should check our Gallery of Early Computers and old tech reviews from BYTE Magazine.

Picture sources:

WANT MORE?

Can't get enough of nostalgia? Don't miss: The history of PC hardware, in pictures.

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The History of Computer Data Storage, in Pictures - pingdom.com

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Nowadays we are used to having hundreds of gigabytes of storage capacity in our computers. This was pure science fiction only a few decades ago. For example, the first hard disk drive to have gigabyte capacity was as big as a refrigerator, and that was in 1980. Not so long ago!

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a blue ray disk reads in a cd player and plays movies or tv shows

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This is a semiconductor device used to emit, base, and collect data through a circuit.

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a CD is a late 20th century storage device for data or music.

# data[].attributes.body
The Papyrus Paper is an early form of paper made from the pith of the papyrus plant and Cyperus Papyrus. This form of text was used in Ancient Egypt but is also known to be used in the Mediterranean, Western Asia and even Europe.
http://cs-exhibitions.uni-klu.ac.at/index.php?id=318

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stained windows were made so that light would be able to shine through and form a painting that the window made.

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Used to store data such as locations or differences in certain areas of the world

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The Phonograph was made as a result of Thomas Edison's work on inventions such as the telegram and the telephone. The original tin foil Phonographs would work like this, when someone speaks into the mouthpiece, the sound vibrations would be indented onto the cylinder using the recording needle.
http://cs-exhibitions.uni-klu.ac.at/index.php?id=219

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photographic film is a strip or sheet of transparent film that is used in old cameras.

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Laserdisc's were first available on the market in 1978.  For their time, Laserdisc's were incredibly advanced, able to store 2 hours of film or audio for long periods of time.  Unfortunately, with the invention of the CD, the fell out of favor.  Here is the link.

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An sd card is a card you inject to a computer to show or upload photos or videos you have taken

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the zip drive is a removable  of a floppy disk

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The year is 1995. You're stuck with slow floppy disks that only hold 1.44 MB of data. But there's an exciting new technology: Zip drives, which can hold 100 MB and free you from floppy disks!

Now, 25 years later, we look back at Iomega's Zip technology and its history. Did you know some industries still use Zip drives?

Why Zip Drives Were Exciting

Again, in 1995, when compared with the standard floppy disk, the Zip drive felt like a revelation! It allowed people to back up their hard drives and transfer large files with ease. At launch, it retailed for around $199 (about $337 today, when adjusted for inflation), and the disks sold for $19.95 apiece (about $34 today.)

Zip drives were originally available in two versions. One used a Windows- or DOS-based PC's parallel printer port as its interface. The other used the higher-speed SCSI interface common on Apple Macintosh computers.

Zip proved phenomenally successful during its first year on the market. In fact, Iomega had trouble keeping up with the demand for both drives and disks.

To celebrate its 25th birthday, let's take a look at what made Zip so zippy, how the brand changed over time, and what eventually killed it.

A Stylish Design

Compared to the standards of the day, the original Zip drive's industrial design felt cool and modern. Its deep indigo color stood out in a world of beige PCs and Macs. Small and light, the drive measured about 7.2 x 5.3 x 1.5 inches and weighed under one pound.

Zip's design bristled with smart touches, including two sets of rubber feet, so people could position the drive vertically or horizontally. You inserted the power plug at a right angle. It followed a deep channel out to the back of the unit to prevent accidental unplugging when the drive was reading or writing data. You could see the label of an inserted disk without ejecting it thanks to a window on top of the drive.

Iomega later introduced an internal version of the ZIP drive that fit in a standard 5.25-inch drive bay, but the external models (shown above) remained more popular.

The Original Zip Disks

After you formatted Zip's original 100 MB disks (in MS-DOS or Windows), they stored about 96 MB of data. Measuring 4 x 4 x 0.25 inches, they were only slightly larger than the 3.5-inch floppies. They had a hard, rugged shell with a spring-loaded metal shutter.

Like the 3.5-inch floppy, each Zip disk contained rotating flexible magnetic media inside. But unlike the floppy, this disk spun at a very high 2,968 RPM, which allowed the much faster data transfer rates.

Three Sizes of Zip

Over its lifespan, the Zip brand had three disk sizes. After the initial 100 MB drive, Iomega released a 250 MB (above, right) in 1999 for $199. In 2002, the company launched the Zip 750 (above, center) for $180. This drive utilized 750 MB disks but remained backward-compatible with the 100 and 250 MB disks.

With the 750 MB drive, Zip disks surpassed the 650 MB capacity of a CD-R for the first time. This captured attention in the press, but it arrived too late to make much of a difference in the market.

PocketZip

In 1999, Iomega introduced Clik!-a small, pocket-sized removable storage system. It utilized very small (approximately 2 x 2 x 0.7 inches) magnetic floppy disks and equally small drives, including one that fit into a standard PCMCIA card slot. Each disk held 40 MB of data.

After the " click of death " on the 100 MB Zip drives spread through the media, Iomega changed the name of the Clik! format to PocketZip in 2000.

The format was intended to be used with small personal electronic devices, such as digital cameras and portable music players. However, due to competition from rugged, compact flash media cards with no moving parts, Iomega's tiny format never took off.

Zip Oddities

Iomega tried several times to build on the Zip technology and brand, and diversify its product line. One of its most notable items remains the HipZip (2001). This pocket-size portable MP3 player used 40 MB PocketZip disks as media. But its lackluster interface software and heavy competition from hard-drive-based players rendered it unsuccessful.

FotoShow (2000)-a glorified 250 MB Zip drive with a composite TV output that served up still image slideshows from Zip disks-was another interesting attempt. It was intended for business presentations and people who wanted to show their family photos on a TV. While it was a clever idea, its clunky, slow software held it back.

A Graphic Design Killer-App

In the late '90s and early '00s, several of Apple's Power Mac G3 and G4 desktop computers included an internal Zip drive option. Not long after launch, Zip disks found a killer application with graphic designers (who commonly used Macs). The disks became the de facto standard for transferring high-resolution artwork between machines or to printshops.

After most of the world had forgotten about Zip disks, graphic designers still commonly used them.

ZipCD

The price of a single recordable CD-R dropped from $100 to $10 during the '90s. By the end of the decade, you could get one for just a few cents. Each CD-R held 650 MB of data-6.5 times more than the standard 100 MB Zip disk.

As competition for inexpensive CD-R drives heated up, Iomega decided to market its own CD-R drive under the Zip brand.

ZipCD 650 (2000) initially sold well, but it quickly gained a bad reputation for unreliability. Iomega sold several other ZipCD and CD-R drives under other brand names later, but none could capture the market the 100 MB Zip drive once held.

What Killed Zip Drives?

The introduction of widespread, inexpensive CD-R drives and media-which could be read by any standard CD-ROM drive-began to eat away Zip's market share for removable backups. Businesses also started installing local area networks (LANs) in ever-increasing numbers. LANs allowed large file transfers between machines without any removable media at all.

Compared to these new options, a proprietary removable floppy drive was far less attractive.

In the '00s, additional competitors emerged, including DVD-R drives, broadband internet access, and removable flash USB sticks. At that point, Zip disks had already become largely irrelevant for most people.

Amazingly, though, even 25 years later, Zip is not entirely dead. According to Wikipedia, some aviation companies still use Zip disks to distribute data updates for airplane navigation systems. For a while, vintage computer enthusiasts (Atari, Mac, Commodore) also often used SCSI Zip drives to quickly transfer data, although that has now largely been replaced by flash media interfaces.

While few people still use Zip media, the format did shine brightly in the 1990s. So, happy birthday, Zip!

ZIP Memories

Did you use a ZIP drive back in the day? What did you use it for? We'd love to hear about your ZIP memories-good, bad, or otherwise-in the comments below.

Benj Edwards is a Staff Writer for How-To Geek. For over 14 years, he has written about technology and tech history for sites such as The Atlantic, Fast Company, PCMag, PCWorld, Macworld, Ars Technica, and Wired. In 2005, he created Vintage Computing and Gaming, a blog devoted to tech history. He also created The Culture of Tech podcast and regularly contributes to the Retronauts retrogaming podcast. Benj Edwards
Read Full Bio "

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Even 25 Years Later, the Iomega Zip Is Unforgettable

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The year is 1995. You're stuck with slow floppy disks that only hold 1.44 MB of data. But there's an exciting new technology: Zip drives, which can hold 100 MB and free you from floppy disks! Now, 25 years later, we look back at Iomega's Zip technology and its history.

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The DVD is a form of media commonly used to record movies unto.  It uses 1s and 0s burned into small circular grooves.  The DVD player then converts the 1s and 0s into images and/or sounds.

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This article is about the disc format in general. For the video recording format based upon DVD, see DVD-Video. For the audio storage format also based upon DVD, see DVD-Audio. For other uses, see DVD (disambiguation).

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A floppy disk but more advanced

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you plug the cartridge into the system it reads it which allows the game to be played

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Created in 1977,  it used magnetic tape to play a video when put into the VCR

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This has an electrical conductivity value in between the conductor. Data is stored in tiny circuit called a memory cell.

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Stores data

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it was used in the phonograph to make the noise by it spinning it caused vibrations in the air to travel down the horn

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wax recording thomas edison amberola gold moulded amberol cylinder edison amberol wax cylinder recordings vintage edison cylinder alva edison phonograph phonograph record player

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It's a analog magnetic tape recording format for audio recording and play back.

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made by Alan Shugart in 1967 and can stored 360 kilobytes for the computer.

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The floppy disk drive ( FDD) was invented at IBM by Alan Shugart in 1967. The first floppy drives used an 8-inch disk (later called a " diskette" as it got smaller), which evolved into the 5.25-inch disk that was used on the first IBM Personal Computer in August 1981. The 5.25-inch disk held 360 kilobytes compared to the 1.44 megabyte capacity of today's 3.5-inch diskette.

The 5.25-inch disks were dubbed " floppy" because the diskette packaging was a very flexible plastic envelope, unlike the rigid case used to hold today's 3.5-inch diskettes.

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By the mid-1980s, the improved designs of the read/write heads, along with improvements in the magnetic recording media, led to the less-flexible, 3.5-inch, 1.44-megabyte (MB) capacity FDD in use today. For a few years, computers had both FDD sizes (3.5-inch and 5.25-inch). But by the mid-1990s, the 5.25-inch version had fallen out of popularity, partly because the diskette's recording surface could easily become contaminated by fingerprints through the open access area.

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The floppy disk drive ( FDD) was invented at IBM by Alan Shugart in 1967. The first floppy drives used an 8-inch disk (later called a " diskette" as it got smaller), which evolved into the 5.25-inch disk that was used on the first IBM Personal Computer in August 1981.

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Tally Sticks are an ancient device made to record Numbers and messages, The Tally stick speaks or itself as it is basically  a stick with certain carvings on it, of course this was definitely not the most efficient way of storring data, for Caveman time (5000 BC) its quite impressive.
http://cs-exhibitions.uni-klu.ac.at/index.php?id=319

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Random Access Memory (or simply RAM) is the memory or information storage in a computer that is used to store running programs and data for the programs. Data (information) in the RAM can be read and written quickly in any order. Normally, the random access memory is in the form of computer chips. Usually, the contents of RAM are accessible faster than other types of information storage but are lost every time the computer is turned off. Non-volatile random-access memory (NVRAM) keeps its data without using power, but is more expensive and works more slowly, so it is used in smaller amounts.

Since the late 20th century, RAM uses transistors, usually MOSFETs, to store data.

Different types of RAM

Dynamic random access memory (DRAM) is the majority in computers. Modern computers use several types of DRAM. Before 2002, most computers used single data rate (SDR) RAM. Most computers made since then use either double data rate (DDR), DDR2, DDR3, or DDR4 RAM. The later types allow stored data to be moved and used more quickly, so that the computer's processor can keep working quickly without having to wait for data as long or as often.

Different kinds of RAM usually will not work together in the same computer. Most computers can only use one kind of RAM. Some can use a small number of different kinds. Different kinds of RAM often have differently shaped connectors. This limits which RAM chips a particular computer model can use.

Static RAM (SRAM) needs power to keep its data, but doesn't need the computer to be active. Some SRAM chips are battery-backed. This type has a built-in battery to make sure no data is lost if the computer is turned off. Some computers have a little SRAM and mostly DRAM.

Other kinds of memory

Information that the computer always needs, that does not often change, is normally kept in read-only memory (ROM), which does not lose its contents when the computer is turned off. Such items include the BIOS (Basic Input/Output System), which stores the most basic commands for the computer, telling it how it should start up. The BIOS also tells the computer how to input and output information. The BIOS can be compared to the part of your brain that tells your heart how to beat. This is an important part.

Images for kids

A portion of a core memory with a modern flash SD card on top

1 Megabit chip - one of the last models developed by VEB Carl Zeiss Jena in 1989

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Random Access Memory (or simply RAM) is the memory or information storage in a computer that is used to store running programs and data for the programs. Data (information) in the RAM can be read and written quickly in any order. Normally, the random access memory is in the form of computer chips.

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stores data of what was used, how they were used and what they represent

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tombs were used to burry the dead and they're riches they stored carvings, paintings, statues, money and anything else said person brought to the grave.

https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fa57.foxnews.com%2Fstatic.foxnews.com%2Ffoxnews.com%2Fcontent%2Fuploads%2F2020%2F01%2F931%2F524%2FTombPriestsEgyptAP.jpg%3Fve%3D1%26tl%3D1&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.foxnews.com%2Fscience%2Fhigh-priests-tombs-discovered-in-egypt&tbnid=LVNc8jXZlarQ0M&vet=12ahUKEwjp_dHD5LHsAhVNTK0KHcKyD_IQMygAegUIARDNAQ..i&docid=DrLIMw_pmvlSkM&w=931&h=524&q=tombs&safe=strict&ved=2ahUKEwjp_dHD5LHsAhVNTK0KHcKyD_IQMygAegUIARDNAQ

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a ROM cartridge is a removable memory card designed to connect to consumer electronics such as home computers and video game consoles.

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stores data even if it is turned off

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Turn data into insight and analysis into action. Micron Storage is powering the mobile workforce, cloud and immense data centers of today and tomorrow.

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Turn data into insight and analysis into action. Micron Storage is powering the mobile workforce, cloud and immense data centers of today and tomorrow. The volume, variety and velocity with which we generate new data today is unparalleled. Micron understands the importance of providing the right capacity SSDs to manage today's demanding workloads.

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A solid-state drive is a solid-state storage device that uses integrated circuit assemblies to store data

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Magnetic tape drive stores video and audio

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SD card is a flash memory card. It uses nonvolatile semiconductor memory to store data on portable or remote computing devices.

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projector tape  in 1895. They used it in movie theater to go threw the recorded movies.

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projector tape  in 1895. They used it in movie theater to go threw the recorded movies.

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cinema projector projector movie elite screens felt tape projection screen velvet tape reel icon vector tape icon projector screens

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A storage server is a type of server that is used to store, access, secure and manage digital data and files.

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1. Stick bar USB flash drive.

Brand such as Samsung, Toshiba, Micron, Hynix, Sandisk and Intel. FULL CAPACITY is guarantee.

1) Memory Available: 256/512MB, 1/2/4/8/16/32/64GB.

2) Interface: High Speed USB 2.0.

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Just send your Artwork or Design now, we will make it to be a Unique Usb Flash Drive Product for you.

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Vector Artwork is the best for us to do the Logo Printing on Usb Flash Drive Product.

Pantone Color for Usb Flash Drive as you required.

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We have many fantastic packaging for Usb Flash Drive. Also we can do Customized Packaging. Here are some our Standard Package Box.

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full metal long stick bar customized 1gb flash drive disk mini udp chip

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Full Metal Long Stick Bar Customized 1GB Flash Drive Disk Mini UDP Chip

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1. Stick bar USB flash drive. Brand such as Samsung, Toshiba, Micron, Hynix, Sandisk and Intel. FULL CAPACITY is guarantee. 1) Memory Available: 256/512MB, 1/2/4/8/16/32/64GB. 2) Interface: High Speed USB 2.0. 3) Data Retention: At least 10 year, 100 thousand times Read and Write. 5) Plug-and-play, no external power supply required, USB bus-powered.

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DECtapes were made to be durable and reliable enough to be the computer's operating system main storage medium.

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Magnetic Core Memory is an early form of data memory made in 1949. This Early source of data uses small magnetic rings to store data using the polarity of the magnetic field these rings have.
http://cs-exhibitions.uni-klu.ac.at/index.php?id=307

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A Quipu was device that was used by Incans approximately 600 years ago.  Every time an Incan made a purchase, they would make another knot on the line that represented purchases.  This way, they kept track of how much someone had bought something for and how many purchases they had made.

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the debit card allows you to take money out of your bank and check out without having to writing a check/physically handing money over

# data[].attributes.body
stores an event of time on a piece of paper

# data[].attributes.body
Cloud storage is a cloud computing model that stores data on the Internet through a cloud computing provider

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A type of memory card often used in digital cameras and other portable devices.

# data[].attributes.body
it provides a low-cost medium for recording voice and video signals

# data[].attributes.body
made in 1963 designed to be durable and reliable enough to act as a computer’s operating system main storage medium

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Nowadays we are used to having hundreds of gigabytes of storage capacity in our computers. This was pure science fiction only a few decades ago. For example, the first hard disk drive to have gigabyte capacity was as big as a refrigerator, and that was in 1980. Not so long ago!

Pingdom stores a lot of monitoring data every single day, and considering how much we take today's storage capacity for granted, it's interesting to look back and put things into perspective. Here is a look back at some interesting storage devices from the early computer era.

The Selectron Tube

The Selectron tube had a capacity of 256 to 4096 bits (32 to 512 bytes). The 4096-bit Selectron was 10 inches long and 3 inches wide. Originally developed in 1946, the memory storage device proved expensive and suffered from production problems, so it never became a success.

Above: The 1024-bit Selectron.

Punch Cards

Early computers often used punch cards for input both of programs and data. Punch cards were in common use until the mid-1970s. It should be noted that the use of punch cards predates computers. They were used as early as 1725 in the textile industry (for controlling mechanized textile looms).

Above: Card from a Fortran program: Z(1) = Y + W(1)

Punched Tape

Same as with punch cards, punched tape was originally pioneered by the textile industry for use with mechanized looms. For computers, punch tape could be used for data input but also as a medium to output data. Each row on the tape represented one character.

Above: 8-level punch tape (8 holes per row).

Magnetic Drum Memory

Invented all the way back in 1932 (in Austria), it was widely used in the 1950s and 60s as the main working memory of computers. In the mid-1950s, magnetic drum memory had a capacity of around 10 kB.

The Hard Disk Drive

The first hard disk drive was the IBM Model 350 Disk File that came with the IBM 305 RAMAC computer in 1956. It had 50 24-inch discs with a total storage capacity of 5 million characters (just under 5 MB).

Above: IBM Model 350, the first-ever hard disk drive.

The first hard drive to have more than 1 GB in capacity was the IBM 3380 in 1980 (it could store 2.52 GB). It was the size of a refrigerator, weighed 550 pounds (250 kg), and the price when it was introduced ranged from $81,000 to $142,400.

A hard disk drive called SyQuest was targeted for personal computers, and for many years had no relevant competition in terms of transferring large desktop publisher documents. The first SyQuest SQ306RD introduced in 1983 had endless (at the time) 5MB hard drive for most of the available data types, also audio and video. In 1986, a 44 MB SQ555 and SQ400 were available on the market.
Above: Removable hard disk SyQuest 44 MB.
The Laserdisc

We mention it here mainly because it was the precursor to the CD-ROM and other optical storage solutions. It was mainly used for movies. The first commercially available laserdisc system was available on the market late in 1978 (then called Laser Videodisc and the more funkily branded DiscoVision) and were 11.81 inches (30 cm) in diameter. The discs could have up to 60 minutes of audio/video on each side. The first laserdiscs had entirely analog content. The basic technology behind laserdiscs was invented all the way back in 1958.

The Floppy Disc

The diskette, or floppy disk (named so because they were flexible), was invented by IBM and in common use from the mid-1970s to the late 1990s. The first floppy disks were 8 inches, and later in came 5.25 and 3.5-inch formats. The first floppy disk, introduced in 1971, had a capacity of 79.7 kB, and was read-only. A read-write version came a year later.

Magnetic Tape

Magnetic tape was first used for data storage in 1951. The tape device was called UNISERVO and was the main I/O device on the UNIVAC I computer. The effective transfer rate for the UNISERVO was about 7,200 characters per second. The tapes were metal and 1200 feet long (365 meters) and therefore very heavy.

And of course, we can't mention magnetic tape without also mentioning the standard compact cassette, which was a popular way of data storage for personal computers in the late 70s and 80s. Typical data rates for compact cassettes were 2,000 bit/s. You could store about 660 kB per side on a 90-minute tape.

DECtape
Above left: Dual DECtape unit for a DEC PDP-11. Above right: DECtape removable magnetic media.
DECtape was a magnetic data storage introduced in 1963 used mainly with Digital Equipment Corporation computers. It was designed to be durable and reliable enough to act as a computer's operating system main storage medium. The tape was 0.75 in (19 mm) wide and was accommodating 6 data tracks which were paired with non-adjacent tracks. It could have been written/read in any direction, and it was almost error-proof. The DECtape was used on Digital Equipment's PDP-series of mainframes and minicomputers, and each tape could store 184K 12-bit PDP-8 words or 144K 18-bit words.

There are so many interesting pictures from "the good old days" when you look around on the web. These were some of the best we could find, and we hope you liked them.
The Selectron. The punch card. The punch card reader and writer. Punched tape 1 and 2. UNIVAC magnetic drum. IBM 650 computer magnetic drum. The IBM Model 350 Disk File. 250 MB hard drisk drive from 1979. The IBM 3380. Laserdisc vs DVD. Held Laserdisc. 8-inch floppy drive. 8-inch floppy in use. UNISERVO and UNIVAC I. The IBM 3410. The compact cassette. The Datassette, SyQuest, TU56DECtape, DECtape I and II. And as always, Wikipedia was a great source for checking out the actual facts. EDIT: We removed the comment about the Commodore Datassette sound, since it was a factual error. We also removed this: "(For those who weren't there, you could hear the sound of the data being read as a high-pitched, screechy sound while you were loading your programs.)" We also went with some of the comment suggestions and decided to add paragraphs regarding the SyQuest and DECtape.
If you are interested in the history of computer science, you should check our Gallery of Early Computers and old tech reviews from BYTE Magazine.

Picture sources:

WANT MORE?

Can't get enough of nostalgia? Don't miss: The history of PC hardware, in pictures.

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The History of Computer Data Storage, in Pictures - pingdom.com

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Nowadays we are used to having hundreds of gigabytes of storage capacity in our computers. This was pure science fiction only a few decades ago. For example, the first hard disk drive to have gigabyte capacity was as big as a refrigerator, and that was in 1980. Not so long ago!

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Also know as a diskette, floppy, or FD, the floppy disk is another type of storage medium that uses magnetic storage technology to store information.

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Scrolls were the first form of editable record keeping texts, used in Eastern Mediterranean ancient Egyptian civilizations.

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Coins were, in ancient times, storage devices that made transactions easy.  Every different coin held a different value, which made buying and selling things much easier.  Although the first time we found clear evidence of coins was around 600 B.C. , they had been around for much longer.

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Ancient Coins: Still Relevant Today, photo courtesy of Metals.com

For over 2600 years, coins have been used as currency. As early as the 6th century BCE, various civilizations used coins as money, including the Lydians, Romans, and Greeks.

Although the first civilization to use them is debated by experts, what's certain is the coins were made of a gold and silver alloy called electrum. Alloys were used because they're a stronger metal, physically, and less likely to corrode.

Ancient coins were not so different than those still in circulation today; both frequently depict profiles of royalty and great leaders, or scenes displaying power in nature.

A great example of this is found in one of the earliest coins ever discovered is the Lydian stater which illustrates a confrontation between a lion and a bull. This is not unlike the buffalo or bald eagle still in circulation today.
The Roman Empire
Coins from the Roman empire are still among the most popular ancient coins for collectors. The Romans began coin production around the year 326 BCE. Their currency, the denarii, was circulated for over 400 years. Romans struck coins primarily with gold and silver, and occasionally bronze.

The Roman denarii had different coins, made of different precious metals, representing different values. For instance, one gold denarius was equivalent to twenty-five silver denariipieces.

During the height of the Roman production and use of denarii, the ancients produced an impressive seventeen million coins per year.
Ancient Chinese Dynasties
At the same time, several thousand miles east, the Chinese were producing their own coinage. The coins were in circulation across multiple dynasties. Unlike the Romans, they primarily used copper and iron in their currency, although they occasionally used silver. It's worth noting that precious metals, like gold and silver, were uncommonly used.

Around the same time, the Chinese debuted deerskin notes, in addition to their coinage. These deerskin notes were an early iteration of the Chinese invention that came centuries later, paper currency.
Medieval Europe (1100-1485 CE)
Over one thousand years later in medieval Europe, coins continued to evolve and change with the technology and resources of the day. Tools and processes improved, and right alongside it, the demand for coins increased.

England is commonly considered the quintessential medieval society, and it was indeed the premiere coin producer. England alone had more than 1,600 types of coins, which required extensive production and distribution. In fact, there were over 200 active mints and twenty-five different royal issuers of coins, the majority of which were comprised of silver.
Medieval Coin Production
A staple of medieval and most ancient societies, blacksmithing was integral to coin production. Coinage is a particularly refined blacksmithing skill which required a system of artists, apprentices, and blacksmiths.

The process began with oven-heated metal formed into round, blank coins which were carried by a blacksmith apprentice to the experienced striker of the coin. Using two different dies, made of bronze or iron, to make the desired imprints on the coins.

The experienced blacksmith would the blank coin between the two dies and struck to imprint both the obverse, or the front, and the reverse of the coin. The most productive, experienced blacksmiths could produce as many as 20,000 strikes per day.
Current Era
Coins from these civilizations are still available for collectors today. While Roman pieces are among the most popular, collectors can and do still acquire pieces from the ancient Greeks, multiple Chinese dynasties, and more.

Beyond these ancient coins, gold, bullion, and silver still represent wise investments and are available for purchase from Metals.com.

The Metals.com Staff

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For over 2600 years, coins have been used as currency. As early as the 6th century BCE, various civilizations used coins as money, including the Lydians, Romans, and Greeks. Although the first civilization to use them is debated by experts, what's certain is the coins were made of a gold and silver alloy called electrum.

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This early form of communication has been apart of the human history for thousands of years. In the early stages of this memory storage device they where stored on Babylonian Clay from around 2300 BC, the first full world maps no matter the correctness where found in around the early 16th century.
https://www.mapsinternational.co.uk/blog/old-maps-a-brief-history-of-cartography/#:~:text=Old%20Maps%20have%20been%20part,tablets%20from%20about%202300%20B.C.

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This device uses microgroove specifications. To use it you need to put it in phonograph or record player

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A cd is a portable storage medium that can be used to record and play back audio, video and other data in digital form.

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People carved messages into animal bones, antlers and teeth.

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Electronic Color Television is Here (Feb, 1947)

Electronic Color Television is Here
ALL-ELECTRONIC color television, which RCA engineers have achieved in a form that does not make black-and-white equipment obsolete, is a complete departure from the mechanical color transmissions of recent years. Mirrors and photoelectric cells replace moving parts.

In a recent demonstration at Princeton, N. J., pictures were broadcast with a new color-slide camera. Its developers plan laboratory transmission of live-action studio scenes by mid-1947, outdoor action scenes late in 1947, theater-size pictures in 1948.

The electronic system's mirrors and tubes split a beam of light into red, blue, and green images. Three kinescopes in the receiver pick up the separate images simultaneouslyâ€"in contrast to mechanical systems in which a rotating filter transmits the three colors one at a timeâ€"and project a merged, flickerless picture.

Color television requires much higher frequencies than black-and-white work because a wider band must be used. The operating standards, however, such as the scanning rate, number of lines, and rate of picture repetition (30 per second), are the same as in commercial television. So a frequency converter would suffice to equip any black-and-white receiver to handle color broadcasts in black and white. Thus the advent of commercial color televisionâ€" still some years away by RCA estimates â€"need not make present sets obsolete.

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Electronic Color Television is Here - Popular Science (Feb, 1947)

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ALL-ELECTRONIC color television, which RCA engineers have achieved in a form that does not make black-and-white equipment obsolete, is a complete departure from the mechanical color transmissions of recent years. Mirrors and photoelectric cells replace moving parts. In a recent demonstration at Princeton, N. J., pictures were broadcast with a new color-slide camera.

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A Floppy disk is a type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square. Floppy disks are read by a floppy disk drive.

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stores data so that the data can be used to open, close or activate devices

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a critical form of communication that allows multiple people to connect to each other and pass files back and forth

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Used for writing in cuneiform, imprinted on a tablet made from wet clay with a stylus often made from reeds.

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a map is a representation of selected characteristics of a place

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The writer Truman Capote claimed to have written the first novel with actual events that have occurred in 1965.

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Phonographs are the earliest commercial medium for recording and reproducing sound and are commonly known as records in their era of popularity.

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flash drives are often used for storing data, pictures or videos

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Created in 1928 by Fritz Pfleumer, it's made of a thin magnetizable coating on a long narrow strip of plastic film. When it is being played, the motion of the tape pulls a magnetic field across a gap, creating a varying magnetic field in the core and a signal in the coil.

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The Antikythera Mechanism was a complex analog computer that predated the Analytical Engine and other computers by about a thousand years.  It was used to navigate the seas and oceans.  When a date was entered, it could give you the exact location of celestial bodies and stars in the sky.  It could also compensate for leap years as well.

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The ancient Greeks were responsible for such marvels as the catapult and the camera obscura. They invented the astrolabe, a forerunner of the sextant, which aided marine navigation by (among other things) measuring the angle between the horizon and the sun or other celestial bodies. By the end of the first century BCE, they had even invented the odometer, which measured the distance a cart or carriage traveled. So when it comes to engineering, they were no slouches. When it comes to preserving their most advanced inventions for posterity...well, that's another story. At the beginning of the 20th century, historians were shocked to learn that Greek thinkers had built a rather sophisticated analog computer in the neighborhood of 82 BCE and then, astonishingly, left no record of its existence.

Low Gear

In 1900, a ship carrying Greek sponge divers was blown off course in a storm. They anchored near the small island of Antikythera, and decided that as long as they were there, they might as well dive and look for sponges. What they found instead was a shipwreck, under about 42 meters (140 feet) of water. Returning later with a navy ship, the divers recovered many artifacts from the sunken vessel, including marble and bronze statues. Archeologists who examined the pieces and other evidence reliably dated the shipwreck at around 65 BCE (give or take 15 years). But one of the archeologists noticed that a clump of bronze contained what appeared to be gears-an astonishing discovery, since that would make it the world's oldest surviving geared mechanism. Further examination showed that the object was originally a wooden case holding about 32 bronze gears, with several dials on the outside. Over the centuries, the bronze had corroded, the wood had deteriorated, and the whole mass had accumulated heavy calcium deposits. But some inscriptions on bronze plates were still legible, and researchers began the painstaking task of reconstructing what the device must have looked like when it was made.

The first thorough description of the device-based solely on visual inspection and measurements-was published in 1959. Later evaluations included crucial additional details from X-ray and gamma-ray analysis, among other techniques. And eventually, in 2008, researchers were able to build a complete, working replica of the device. It turned out to be a clockwork-like mechanism designed to display the progress and positions of the sun, moon, and all five of the other planets known at the time (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn) over a period of 19 years, along with solar and lunar eclipses and the years of the Olympic games. In other words: it's an analog astronomical computer. It had apparently been built several years before the shipwreck-most likely in 87-82 BCE, though some believe it could be as old as 205 BCE.

It's All About Us

That's cool, but it gets even better. At the time the Antikythera mechanism was built, the Greeks still believed the entire universe revolved around the Earth. This caused tremendous problems for predicting the orbits of the planets, which from our perspective do not follow nice elliptical paths. So in order to make this mechanism account for the data, its designer had to invent entirely new arrangements of gears. One of these was the differential (a primitive version of what is found in modern cars)-which, until the discovery of the Antikythera mechanism, was believed to have been invented in the 13th century. As for the overall device, nothing similar is known to have existed until about 1000 CE.

One reason historians find all this so interesting is that previously (in the absence of any reliable evidence to the contrary), the ancient Greeks were believed to have terrific theoretical knowledge when it came to astronomy, physics, and math, but little skill in the way of practical application. Sure, there were occasional remarks about an actual device. Cicero, for example, mentioned (at about the time the Antikythera mechanism was created) a device "recently constructed by our friend Poseidonius, which at each revolution reproduces the same motions of the sun, the moon and the five planets." But since there was no evidence of these devices, few people took such claims literally. The discovery of the Antikythera mechanism changed all that.

We do not know for certain who created the device. The biggest mystery surrounding the Antikythera Mechanism, though, is why and how all records of this technology disappeared. Surely this could not have been the only such device ever created. If technology this important was in use at the time, it stands to reason that there would have been many other similar devices in existence, and that some of those would have survived to this day. But not only is this the only one, it's a fluke that we even know about this one at all. What other ancient technologies may have existed that we don't know about? The answers are probably lying out there-right where you'd least expect them.
Note: This is an updated version of an article that originally appeared on Interesting Thing of the Day on April 28, 2005.

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The ancient Greeks were responsible for such marvels as the catapult and the camera obscura. They invented the astrolabe, a forerunner of the sextant, which aided marine navigation by (among other things) measuring the angle between the horizon and the sun or other celestial bodies.

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Uses integrated circuit assemblies to store data, normally using flash memory.

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Created in the early 2000s, it uses falsh memory, which uses electrically eraseable programmable read-only (EEPROM) format to store and retrieve data.

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Projector tape is a ribbon of corresponding photos that can be played on a projector and are often kept on reels.

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Pictographs are paintings that were made by applying red ochre or, less commonly, black, white or yellow dye. it was a widespread religious tradition for healing and prophesy, along with the vision quest.