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Catalogue Card
Catalogue cards are used as library cards, or other data storage. Congress started selling premade catalogue cards, and they have a hole in them to be held in a rod. It also discouraged people from removing the rod. Catalogue Cards -
Punch Cards
Punch cards can be used for many things, and we still use them today. Your favorite coffee shop could have a punch card reward system still. But what punch card would really be used for, would be doing math on a computer. The first ones were used for looms, to help make intricate patterns quickly. Punch Card -
Punched Tape
The punched tape would be used for encoding data onto a loom. Text, and other intricate patterns would be encoded into punched holes, and rolled into a tape, that would be unfurled for someone to decode into a loom. These hold more data than a punch card, but have long loading times. Punched Tape -
Wheatstone Tape
Wheatstone tape is an adaptation of the punched tape, using the same system of punching holes and rolling it up into a roll, but Sir Charles Wheatstone decided to use it to automatically broadcast morse over radio. The roll of dots in the middle would be used for the automatic feeder. Wheatstone Tape -
Macrame Lace Embroidery Punched Roll
This is a variation of punch card, this time being continuous, and rolled up. It is still used today, for surprisingly how old it is. Macrame Lace Embroidery Punched Roll -
Mark Sense Card
The mark sense card should look familiar, because it is. Ever had to fill out a bubble quiz before? This is the machine that started it out. It had smaller bubbles, but did not use optical technology to detect what to put the answers against. Mark Sense Card -
McBee Keysort Card
The McBee keysort card would be another way of manually sorting everything. It had a special box and thin rods to help it sort. But the one special thing about this way of sorting would be the punches out of each side to exempt it from a certain section, so that it wouldn't be picked up by the rod. McBee Keysort Card -
Aperture Card
The military is usually smart with holding / sending data, and thats what the aperture card did. Small pieces of microfilm would be placed onto a card, the microfilm usually containing strategic photos. But, they would also be punched out in unique sections to be easily sorted by machine. Aperture Card -
Open Reel Instrumentation and Data Logging Tape
Have you ever listened to a VHS, used a credit / debit card, or even listened to a cassette tape? This is where it started. This would be used for recording / logging data. It was basically a giant VHS recording, which could then easily be played back later. Open Reel Instrumentation and Data Logging Tape -
UNISERVO
The UNISERVO is unique, in the way that it is the first magnetic tape drive for a computer. Developed by IBM, it was a huge machine. It had 8 tracks for recording data, and is as tall as 6 foot. UNISERVO -
Magnetic-Core Memory
If you care about gaming, then you care about RAM. Random access memory is important, its basically the computer's short term memory. Magnetic-core memory would be important, because it is RAM, using magnets. You would thread wires through ferrite core rings, and you would need a steady hand and a microscope to see what you're doing. This made it expensive and hard to manufacture with machines. Magnetic-Core Memory -
IBM 305 RAMAC
This is RAM, but now as a disc drive. It is the size of a room, but was popular for accounting. It only held 5-10 mb of data, but was technologically impressive for its time. RAMAC -
IBM 7-Track Tape
The IBM 7-track tape would be an improvement to the UNISERVO, using less. Not much data is available about it, but it would cost ~$6000 dollars a month to rent. IBM 7-Track Tape -
Hickok Cardmatic Tube Tester
Welcome back to punched cards. We can't escape. This would be used for testing tubes, and had an array of 17 by 11, and could test 187 electrical tubes at maximum. These got stopped being used because of transistors. Hickok Cardmatic Tube Tester -
Magnetic Ledger Card
The magnetic ledger card was basically a hybrid between human and mechanical technology. The magnetic strip would contain data like employee name, and other details, and the paper would be used for writing human-readable stuffs / often updated stuffs, like their payrate. Magnetic Ledger Card -
Telephone Auto Dialer Card
This is a fancy punch card. You know how you have quick contact buttons on your phone, but can't remember your mom's phone number? This is basically an early version of that. You would punch out little plastic holes, out of a credit-card sized card, and it would dial a number on a machine automatically. Telephone Auto Dialer Card -
96-Column Punched Card
This is the final punched card to be used with computers. It was used with computers, but once the computer this was used with had an 8-inch floppy data storage choice, this was phased out entirely. I might make my own punch card memory system though, it seems interesting. 96-Column Punched Card -
Floppy Disk
Floppy disks were, well, floppy. They get their name because of the way that they flopped. The later versions didn't flop, but the name stuck. You might call this the save icon, because thats what we have thought about it as. It has as much data storage as 3000 punch cards, well, at least the original 8 inch floppy. Thats .24 MB of data, but more than enough to hold the most famous games from this era. Floppy Disk -
Microsoft
Bill Gates and Paul Allen found Microsoft this year. -
Apple Computer Co.
Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne found Apple this year. -
5.5 Inch Flippy / Floppy Disk
This is an improvement to the 8 inch floppy. This looks sorta like a square cd. The reason I mentioned the flippy disk is because those also were made around the same time. Because most drives were one-sided, only one side of the magnetic disk inside got written to. You could cut out a notch and flip it, making space doubled. Flippy Disk Floppy Disk -
Computer Count
Within the 1980s, America had estimated over ~1 million computers were within homes. -
MCD Cassette
The Sony Walkman didn't use this, no. It was ahead of its time in development, being better than the 8-inch floppy. But during development, it was actually ~6 years later. MCD Cassette -
Optical Phonecard
Remember that punch card phone card? Well we use lasers now. IR lasers. We shine them in the card, and it works by erasing units one by one. This was eventually replaced by a magnetic stripe. Optical Phonecard -
LaserDisc
This is the Laserdisc. Someone thought, well what if I put video, audio, and subtitles onto a record, because this is what you get. It spins like a record, has built in subtitles, and didn't really catch on. Its just a large CD for all it matters. Laserdisc Video Laserdisc -
3.5 Inch Floppy Disk
This is the last entry I make about floppy diskettes, because it really deviates from being floppy, but to being a disk spinning in a plastic box. Still, has to be the most famous floppy disk yet. You could tell if they were double density if they had the HD icon. 3.5 inch Microfloppy -
60-Pin Memory Card
Slowly we began to move away from using disk memory to flash / disk memory (as in hard disk not floppy disk), and this lead to the creation of the 60-pin memory card. This was used in computers, surprisingly. Plug and play, as they say. 60-Pin Memory Card -
CD-ROM
Well, we finally meet the the Laserdisc's little brother. The CD. This version is the read only memory, but later they did introduce read write later on. CD-ROM -
CD-RW
This is the read write version of the CD. You could write, and read data on and to it. These phased out the floppy disk almost entirely. CD-RW