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Punch Card
A punched card, punch card, IBM card, or Hollerith card is a piece of stiff paper that contains digital information represented by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions. Now an obsolete recording medium, punched cards were widely used throughout the 19th century for controlling textile looms and in the late 19th and early 20th century for operating fairground organs and related instruments. They were used through the 20th century in unit record machines for input, processing, -
Punch tape
Punched tape or paper tape is a largely obsolete form of data storage, consisting of a long strip of paper in which holes are punched to store data. It was widely used during much of the twentieth century for teleprinter communication, and later as a storage medium for minicomputers and CNC machine tools. -
Magnetic Drum Memory
Drum memory is a magnetic data storage device and was an early form of computer memory widely used in the 1950s and into the 1960s, invented by Gustav Tauschek in 1932 in Austria.[citation needed] For many machines, a drum formed the main working memory of the machine, with data and programs being loaded on to or off the drum using media such as paper tape or punched cards. Drums were so commonly used for the main working memory that these computers were often referred to as drum machines. Drums -
Selectron tube
The selectron tube was created by the RCA in 1946, and it was the first type of technological storage device. it could store up to 4000 KB and the bigger ones measured up to 10 inches in length! However, the selectron tube was very short lived on the market as they were over-powered a couple of years later by another new device. They were quite big and very expensive. -
Magnetic tape
Magnetic tape is a medium for magnetic recording, made of a thin magnetizable coating on a long, narrow strip of plastic. It was developed in Germany, based on magnetic wire recording. Devices that record and play back audio and video using magnetic tape are tape recorders and video tape recorders. A device that stores computer data on magnetic tape is a tape drive (tape unit, streamer). -
Hard Drive Disk
A hard disk drive[2] (HDD) is a non-volatile, random access device for digital data. It features rotating rigid platters on a motor-driven spindle within a protective enclosure. Data is magnetically read from and written to the platter by read/write heads that float on a film of air above the platters. Introduced by IBM in 1956, hard disk drives have fallen in cost and physical size over the years while dramatically increasing in capacity. -
Floppy disk
A floppy disk is a data storage medium that is composed of a disk of thin, flexible ("floppy") magnetic storage medium sealed in a square or rectangular plastic carrier lined with fabric that removes dust particles. Floppy disks are read and written by a floppy disk drive or FDD. Invented by the American information technology company IBM, floppy disks in 8-inch (200 mm), 5¼-inch (130 mm) and 3½-inch (90 mm) forms enjoyed three decades as a popular and ubiquitous form of data storage and exc -
Laserdisc
The LaserDisc (LD) was a home video disc format, and was the first commercial optical disc storage medium. Initially marketed as Discovision in 1978, the technology was licensed and sold as Reflective Optical Videodisc, Laser Videodisc, Laservision, Disco-Vision, DiscoVision, and MCA DiscoVision until Pioneer Electronics purchased the majority stake in the format and marketed it as LaserDisc in 1983. -
Compact Cassette
Compact Cassettes consist of two miniature spools, between which a magnetically coated plastic tape is passed and wound. These spools and their attendant parts are held inside a protective plastic shell. Two stereo pairs of tracks (four total) or two monaural audio tracks are available on the tape; one stereo pair or one monophonic track is played or recorded when the tape is moving in one direction and the second pair when moving in the other direction. -
CD-RW
A CD-RW (Compact Disc-ReWritable) is a rewritable optical disc. It was introduced in 1997, and was known as "CD-Writable" during development. It was preceded by the CD-MO, which was never commercially released. CD-RW discs require a more sensitive laser optics. Also, CD-RWs cannot be read in some CD-ROM drives built prior to 1997. This is why CD-ROM drives of the age must bear a "MultiRead" certification to show compatibility. -
CD-R
A CD-R (Compact Disc-Recordable) is a variation of the Compact Disc invented by Philips and Sony. CD-R is a Write Once Read Many (WORM) optical medium, though the whole disk does not have to be entirely written in the same session. CD-R retains a high level of compatibility with standard CD readers, unlike CD-RW - which can be re-written, but is not capable of playing on many readers, and also uses more expensive media. -
Flash Drives
A USB flash drive consists of a flash memory data storage device integrated with a USB (Universal Serial Bus) interface. USB flash drives are typically removable and rewritable, and physically much smaller than a floppy disk. Most weigh less than 30 g (1 oz).Storage capacities in 2010 can be as large as 256 GB with steady improvements in size and price per capacity expected. Some allow 1 million write or erase cycles[citation needed] and offer a 10-year shelf storage time. -
Blu-Ray disks / HD-DVD
Blu-ray and HD DVD players became commercially available starting in 2006. In early 2008, a tipping point was passed when several studios and distributors shifted to Blu-ray disc. On February 19, 2008, Toshiba officially announced that it would stop the development of the HD DVD players, conceding the format war to the Blu-ray Disc format. -
HVD
The Holographic Versatile Disc (HVD) is an optical disc technology developed between April 2004 and mid-2008 that can store the same amount of information as between 20 and 200 Blu-ray Discs. It employs a technique known as collinear holography, whereby a green and red laser beam are collimated in a single beam.
