• athos77
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    9 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.

    • @[email protected]
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      129 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?

      • @[email protected]
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        69 months ago

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

      • @[email protected]
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        59 months ago

        It’s 0,000075 USD per mb now with your example, which is about 146 666 666 times cheaper.

        • @[email protected]
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          69 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.

          • Redjard
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            19 months ago

            Might be faster if all drives are connected in parallel

  • @Odo
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    349 months ago

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

  • PugJesusM
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    219 months ago

    “Think, Bob - in 70 or so years, maybe we’ll have cut this down to HALF the size!”

    • Uglyhead
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      9 months ago

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

    • @nucleative
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      69 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
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    189 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.

    • @DandomRude
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      159 months ago

      And yet somehow there are still flat earthers and the like carrying around tons of data that proves them wrong but they just don’t care.

    • @crashoverride
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      39 months ago

      I wonder how big a space we’d need to accommodate for just 100 gigs, using the footprint of this 5MB drive?

  • @rhacer
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    109 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.

  • @zzzz
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    69 months ago

    Dude in the white shirt is jacked!

  • Optional
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    59 months ago

    Iirc thats a hard disk.

    • SjmarfOP
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      9 months ago

      My bad; I’ve edited the title. Thanks!