• athos77@kbin.social
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    10 months ago

    The hard drive IBM shipped in 1956:

    • Stored five megabytes
    • Cost $11,000 per megabyte *
    • Was 60 inches long x 68 inches high x 29 inches deep
    • Weighed about one ton

    * about $121,819.66 per mb in today’s money.

    • kboy101222@sh.itjust.works
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      10 months ago

      And nowadays you can get a 2TB SSD that fits in your pocket and costs like $150.

      Can someone do the math on how much cheaper and smaller memory is now?

      • Wahots@pawb.social
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        10 months ago

        Hell, you can get a 1tb microSD card for around that same price. Crazy. Be careful not to accidentally inhale it, lol

        • iamanurd@midwest.social
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          10 months ago

          To add a bit of perspective, the 4tb m.2 ssd that I just bought for around $300USD would fill a cube that is a bit over a football field in length, width, and height.

          It would cost about $44 billion before inflation is factored in, or $487 billion with inflation included.

          It would also use an insane amount of electricity, be a ton slower, and likely generate an enormous amount of heat.

          Hoping I did the math correctly. Haven’t had coffee.

  • Odo@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Pics like this remind me of the Elliott 405 vs Raspberry Pi Zero tweet:

    • Uglyhead@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Or, ‘there will be warehouses full of these one day; just think, a whole One —Hundred—Megabyte!’ Mind blown

    • nucleative@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      I wonder if that concept would have even been present yet. In 1956 they had never seen a technology cycle like doubling of capacities or capabilities like this. Computers were just things that took up entire rooms. Everybody thought the technology was only interesting for massive enterprise or universities.

      I don’t think they even had 8-track at this point? Perhaps some cars had record players, so they had indeed seen some technology go from living room size to car size.

  • guyrocket@kbin.social
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    10 months ago

    I really think it is amazing that now we can put exponentially more data than this in a pocket. And that most humans now carry pocket computers that can access astounding amounts of information.

    The information age really is amazing.

  • rhacer@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    The first two hardrives I had experience were not that big, but still required to people to get into the cabinet. A Fujitsu Eagle and a CDC I can’t remember which model that had 5MB fixed and 5MB removable.