IBM RAMAC

1955 - Reynold Johnson brought a new idea to life. Using magnetic cylinder memory, His team put 50 platters – 24 inch disks – into a series. The end result – the first hard drive was born. The device was then produced as the IBM 350 (debuted September 4th, 1956), which was put into the IBM 305 RAMAC (Random Access Method of Accounting and Control), which was debuted in September 13th, 1956 – with the IBM 355 (hard drive) and IBM 650 (RAMAC) on September 14th. It ran at 1,200 rpm and held 5 MB of data.Reynold Johnson’s prototype weighed one ton. The 350 cost $10,000 / MB.

This Day in Tech History podcast show notes for October 29

• Maxtor DiamondMax
• Brad Silverberg leaves Microsoft
• DC Comics goes online

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Article by Jeffrey Powers @geekazine

Jeffrey has written 381 awesome articles for us at Day in Tech History