Yesterday, while waiting for the downtown 6 at Astor Place, EVG contributor Derek Berg talked with this gentleman holding the giant disk… he is a veteran computer guy who was transporting this hard disk (the IBM 2302?) from the late 1960s to his new office…
Perhaps this held the battle plans for 51 Astor Place?
10 comments:
That's my first MP3 player! It came pre-loaded with the first two verses of ELO's "Evil Woman" (that's all it could hold) and needed 37 AA batteries. Sometimes being an early adopter sucks.
I don't know how Pioneer ever expected the LaserDisc to catch on.
I have one of these at home with 7 episodes of "McCloud" on it.
Great pictures and story Derek. Thanks, made my day so far.
Crazy Eddie, well thank you. Btw the disc was from Equitable, the company that my wife worked for in the IT department for 20 years.
I believe that disk held the plans for the original Death Star.
In the interests of accuracy in media (no pun intended EVG), that's not actually a "hard disk drive" but rather a single magnetic coated platter that was contained in a storage unit, probably an IBM RAMAC from the photos I've seen of them:
http://www.storagenewsletter.com/rubriques/hard-disk-drives/history-first-hdd-ibm-ramac-350
The Ramac 350, that we look at many years ago at IBM's San Jose facility, has to be seen to be believed. The unit consists of an enormous device 60 inches (152cm) long, 68 inches (172cm) high and 29 inches (74cm) deep with a gigantic electric motor attached to a solid axis that held 50 coated aluminum disks - or 100 surfaces - one inch thick and 24 inches (610mm) in diameter, for a mere 5MB raw capacity or 4.4 million characters.
All the electronics, motor, actuators, heads, were contained in the enclosure; this was the magnetic media.
@ A Megabyte Ain't What It Used To Be said…
Well done! Thank you!
Wow 5 megabytes. I think my toothbrush has got more memory.
I work with this gentleman in NYC. :-) he is one of the veterans we have at our workplace. He has this disk and lot many other interesting stories from ancient computer days :-))
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