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05/20/2006

World's First Hard Drive - 1956

Presenting the world's first hard drive, first introduced in 1956 -- IBM's 5MB Random Access Memory Accounting: RAMAC®, magnetic-disk memory storage. It stored information on fifty disks, which spun at 1,200 rpm.
These disks are mounted so as to rotate about a vertical axis, with a spacing of three tenths of an inch between disks. This spacing permits two magnetic heads to be positioned to any one of the 100 concentric tracks which are available on each side of each disk. Each track contains 500 alphanumeric characters. Total storage capacity: 5,000,000 characters. The two recording heads are mounted in a pair of arms which are moved, by a feed-back control system, in a radial direction to straddle a selected disk.
(Thanks, Brian L)

This entry was posted on 05/20/2006 01:13am and is filed under Computers .
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There are 305 comments about this post (13 pages).

1
Posted at 05/20/2006 06:03am by Ronar
aren't 5 MB extremely impressive for 1956? That thing must have been awfully expensive.
2
Posted at 05/20/2006 06:42am by domelhor.net
O primeiro disco rgido Veja aqui uma foto e descrio do primeiro disco rgido de 1956 com a espectacular capacidade de 5MB!
3
Posted at 05/20/2006 08:10am by SaiLok Paradise
1956年，世界上第一个硬盘 /1ee/homes/blog/xlg_ibm_ramac.jpg
4
Posted at 05/20/2006 08:22am by Moe
I think they look cooler like that than what they do now.. Bring back the RAMAC!
5
Posted at 05/20/2006 08:44am by
הכונן הקשיח הראשון בעולם הכונן הקשיח הראשון הוצג לראשונה בשנת 1956 ע"י IBM ומגיע בנפח עצום של 5MB
6
Posted at 05/20/2006 10:49am by Ward
this is interesting. i would have thought it would have been more like 5kb, not 5mb. 5mb is pretting impressive as the above poster said.
7
Posted at 05/20/2006 11:50am by Andrew Andrew Schott
Yes it was. Read this link for a more accurate description : http://www.cedmagic.com/history/ibm-305-ramac.html
8
Posted at 05/20/2006 11:53am by JC
Yea, that was huge for back then, crazy.
9
Posted at 05/20/2006 12:04pm by Jim Oase
I didn't see a harddrive until the mid 1960's. At that time they had a drip pan under them to catch the leaking hydrahlic fluid. The rotating motor and the head actuator where hydralic. I don't know the storage capacity of the unit. It must have been large because the drive assembly was about 5...6 feet long. Instead of being vertically oriented it was horizontal with each disk being about 4 feet in diameter. I am doing this from memory so I am not sure about the platter spacing. I would say about 3...4 inches between platters. At the time we were working on a new idea, instead of platters our look more like a beer keg and used DC motors in replace of the hydralics. Relatively speaking it was fast because it had multiple read heads and only needed to wait for the rotation to gain access to the data verses move the head and wait for rotation. IBM had another storage thing I saw at Langley. This one read strips of magnetic tape that were stored in an array of tubes. I really enjoyed watching this mechanical marvel work. If it got a bad read it put the tape back in the tube, shake its read head and then retrieve the tape again, wrap it around the read head and read the tape again. That device existed about the time simulation was being done for the moon walk in the mid late 1960's. Jim
10
Posted at 05/20/2006 12:16pm by ripi$money
It always amazes me to see how far we have come. (And boy am I glad I have more than a 5 MB hard drive)
11
Posted at 05/20/2006 1:57pm by Thoughts Of A Diseased Imagination » IBM’s First Hard drive - 1956
[...] Time for a bit of nostalgia.WAY back in 1956, well before I was born, IBM were introducing the world to it's RAMAC, a 1200RPM 5MB hard-drive. That 5MB of data was stored on, count them, 50 disks! At 100KB per disk, I'm glad my 250GB external drive isn't that big. For more http://www.techeblog.com/index.php/tech-gadget/worlds-first-hard-drive-1956 [...]
12
Posted at 05/20/2006 3:52pm by citizen lambda
hey, anyone know what they mean by alphanumeric? as in not binary?
13
Posted at 05/20/2006 4:22pm by C. Augusto Valdés
Sería interesante tener una línea de tiempo mostrando el incremento en la capacidad de los discos duros, éste es el primero, de 5mb y llegar hasta el de 10 Tb
14
Posted at 05/20/2006 5:00pm by gaynigger
That's pretty lame. 100k per disc? That's only 800,000 bits, 1s or 0s, you can pick one pixel from a million on your computer screen, the area size allocated for each bit would be relatively huge
15
Posted at 05/20/2006 5:18pm by Keith
This is a spectator to many young people who had not have the least idea on how computer were orginated. A good education on the history of RAMs, solid-state chips as well as hard drives.
16
Posted at 05/20/2006 6:31pm by Steve
I remember seeing something about a 4mb hard drive in the 60s that cost upwards of $100,000. I couldn't even imagine how much this thing cost back in the 50s...
17
Posted at 05/20/2006 7:50pm by PsicoIT Support
El Primer Disco Rídigo [IMGRIGHT=/karellen1975/homes/blog/ramac.jpg]Fue comercializado por IBM en 1956, y almacenaba casi 5 MegaBytes de información en 50 platos, que giraban a 1.200 RPM. Su nombre era RAMAC (Random Access Memory Acc ...
18
Posted at 05/20/2006 7:50pm by KernKonnection.com » World’s First Hard Drive - 1956
[...] full story… Trackback · [...]
19
Posted at 05/21/2006 01:12am by Jake the zipper
jesus, i think i have one of those in my old 133!
20
Posted at 05/21/2006 11:13am by Keith
Wow, That is one big momma...
21
Posted at 05/21/2006 8:00pm by wwjfsqii
zpvuxbtwta uhoslayv uyqwyas
22
Posted at 05/21/2006 10:48pm by austin
IMB was the "big thing" back then like the ipod is like now....
23
Posted at 05/22/2006 10:51am by akash
where can i get this "POWER PLANT" !?!
24
Posted at 05/23/2006 07:06am by All Dugg » World’s First Hard Drive - 1956
[...] Presenting the world’s first hard drive, first introduced in 1956 — IBM’s 5MB Random Access Memory Accounting: RAMACread more | digg story Share and Enjoy:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. [...]
25
Posted at 05/31/2006 5:14pm by rpqxzcg
cpjmkrxc tshumywoq bcwudiowo
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