History of Computer Storage

Punch cards were used to automate textile mills in 1725, and was used to automate information gathering censuses for government organizations by the late 1800's. Were used to store data until the 1960's, when it was replaced by magnetic tape in mainframe computers.

Magnetic Tape was first used in computers in 1951 to store data on the Eckert-Mauchly UNIVAC I, with a data rate of 12,800 characters per second. IBM and DECtape made their own, more advanced standards of magnetic tape. Magnetic tape was also shrunken and placed into cassettes so people can purchase of their favorite music and play whenever they liked. For consumer use, tape is outdated by the more effective Optical Disc and digitally downloading music, movies and games, but large data centers still use tape to backup large amounts of data in case of a disaster.

The hard disk drive stores data in a magnetic form. The first usage was in the IBM 350, which was a disk storage unit introduced on September 13, 1956. The IBM 350 is mainly for keeping records on real-time basis, simultaneously produce output by either punched cards, eliminate peak loads, and provide random access to any record. Hard disk drives improved thought the decades and is still used today. Hard Disk drives are currently being replaced by Solid State Drives, because they have a higher boot speed and is more durable.

The Twistor Memory was a new form of computer memory that was first introduced in 1957. It consisted of a grid of very thin magnetic wires interwoven with copper wires that conducted electrical current. Each intersection of the grid consisted of one bit of computer data. This technology was a precursor to SSD's. Twistor Memory has been replaced by semiconductor memory devices because it is more durable and hold more data than the Twistor memory

The floppy disk is a type of magnetic disk storage that was invented in 1967, but a commercially viable version 8 inch version was invented in 1972. Through the '70s and '80s, the size of the floppy disk drives was shrunk to 5 1⁄4-inch and 3 1⁄2-inch sizes. Uses the same magnetic data recording technology as hard drives. Floppy Disks were replaced by Flash Drives and Optical Discs through the 1990s and 2000s.

Solid State Drives (SSD) uses integrated circuits to store data in a nonvolatile form with no moving parts. Serves the same function as a hard drive, but is much quicker in loading and altering data than a hard drive.

Optical Discs were invented by Sony and Phillips in 1982. The first optical discs were called CD's, and they were used to store data and record audio, like the songs of musicians. Later formats, like DVD and Blu-Ray, could be used to store movies and video-games.

Cloud storage is the practice of uploading data to a service that stores data online, either for free or for a certain amount of money. This practice was inspired by cloud computing, which is allowing multiple computers to work together remotely. Compuserve pioneered this practice in 1983, where they allowed customers to upload any files, and they will place said files onto disks. Today, massive companies like google store enormous amounts of data on their servers.

First-generation flash drives were first introduced during the 2000s. Flash drives are output devices mainly used for storage, storing computer files. These first-generation flash drives held 8 megabytes. Today, flash drives can hold up to 64 gigabytes of data. USB's today are largely outdated, as hard drive sizes have grown, having less of a need to store files externally, and that files can be transferred online more easily, through email or cloud storage.

Scientists have been researching storing data inside DNA, as studies have shown that DNA is extremely information-dense, it can store all data created in human history in one room. Furthermore, it can last for millions of years, far longer than any other form of data storage. There are problems with reading and writing information into DNA, but this was true for all storage media at first.