1956: World's First Hard Drive (5MB)

•Random Access Memory Accounting: RAMAC®, magnetic-disk memory storage, gives fast access to 5,000,000 characters. IBM Bulletin No. 400.
•Slanting Rain: "Shadows'' created on a surface by its irregularities and discontinuities magnified 200,000 times through electron microscopy.
Random Access Memory Accounting
RAMAC, IBM's newest data processing system, needed a unique memory storage system. Ordinary methods of memory storage—magnetic tape, drums, ferrite cores—couldn't store enough "bits" of information. It took a research team of ours,withTriggNoyes and Wes Dickinson as key men at IBM's San Jose Research Labs, to find the answer. The heart of this new idea: magnetic disks, played and replayed like the records in coin-operated music machines!