If you look at computer technology from yesteryears, they look comically primitive and bulky. One popular image frequently shared in social media sites show a large cupboard-sized box lifted on to the cargo bay of a Pan American Airways flight. The caption accompanying the image identifies the box as the IBM 305 RAMAC, the world’s first commercial hard disk developed in 1957. It had a whooping capacity of only 5 megabytes.
In the early days of computing, memory technology permitted a capacity of very few bytes. The first electronic computer developed during the Second World War to help the military calculate artillery firing tables used vacuum tubes to store data. John Presper Eckert then invented a complicated device using mercury-filled glass tubes and quartz crystals that could store up to a few hundred thousand bits—a vast improvement from early memory technologies.
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