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Punch Card
The punch cards was invented by Herman Hollerith. Punched cards date back to the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries when they were used to “program” cloth-making machinery and looms. Punch cards were used to store data so machines could read it. Punch cards is a piece of stiff paper that can be used to contain digital data represented by the existence of holes in predefined positions. Its storage capacity goes up to 15 exabytes and would hold 80 characters. -
Punch Tape
Similar to a punch card, punch tape is used with some early computers as a means to store and input data into the computer. Instead of storing the data on individual cards punch tape stores data on rolls of paper containing punched holes representing the data being inputted or outputted. -
Magnetic Drum
Magnetic drums were the first incarnation of magnetic disk storage. Gustav Tauschek, an Austrian inventor, developed the magnetic drum in 1932. The drums read/write heads were designed for each drum track, using a staggered system over the circumference. Without head movement to control, access time is quite short, being based on one revolution of the drum. If multiple heads are used, data can be transferred quickly, helping to compensate for the lack of RAM in these systems. -
Vacuum Tube
In 1948, Professor Fredrick Williams, and colleagues, developed “the first” Random Access Memory (RAM) for storing frequently used programming instructions, in turn, increasing the overall speed of the computer. Williams used an array of cathode-ray tubes (a form of vacuum tube) to act as on/off switches, and digitally store 1024 bits of information. -
Solid State Drive
Variations of Solid State Drives have been used since the 1950s. An SSD is a nonvolatile storage device that basically does everything a hard drive will do. It stores data on interlinked flash memory chips. -
Cloud Internet
The Internet made the Cloud available as a service. Improvements within the Internet, such as continuously lowering the cost of storage capacity and improved bandwidth, have made it more economical for individuals and businesses to use the Cloud for data storage. The Cloud offers essentially an infinite amount of data storage to its user. Cloud services provide near-infinite scalability, and accessibility to data from anywhere, at anytime. -
Floppy Disc
IBM switched its focus to 8-inch floppy disks from 1969 until the mid-1980s. A floppy disk is an easily removed (and easily installed) portable storage device. It is made of magnetic film encased in a flexible plastic, and is inexpensive to manufacture. IBM developed the 8-inch floppy specifically for the System/370 mainframe. -
Bubble Memory
The Twister Memory concept led Mr. Bobeck to develop another short-lived magnetic memory technology in the 1980’s, known as Bubble Memory. Bubble memory is a thin magnetic film using small magnetized areas which look like bubbles. -
Flash Drive
Flash drives appeared on the market, late in the year 2000. A flash drive plugs into computers with a built-in USB plug, making it a small, easily removable, very portable storage device. Unlike a traditional hard drive, or an optical drive, it has no moving parts, but instead combines chips and transistors for maximum functionality. Generally, a flash drives storage capacity ranges from 8 to 64 GB. -
Data Lake
In October of 2010, James Dixon, founder and former CTO of Pentaho, came up with the term “Data Lake.”Data Lakes were formed specifically to store and process Big Data, with multiple organizations pooling huge amounts of information into a single Data Lake. A Data Lake stores data in its original format and is typically processed by a NoSQL database (a Data Warehouse uses a hierarchical database).
