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Tony Hoare develops Quicksort Algorithm
When Hoare was in Moscow studying machine translation of languages, he developed Quicksort. This algorithm became a worldwide phenomenon used for sorting. He then went on to work with the Elliot Brothers, inventing the Algor 60 compiler. The development of a sorting algorithm helped progress the idea of a computer. -
IBM Disk Drive
The IBM 1311 was the first hard drive that was manufactured with a removable disk pack from IBM. Each pack had the ability to hold up to 2 million characters. The pack weighed approximately 10 pounds and could hold up to 6 disks, with a rotation speed of 1,500 RPM. This invention would help the development of a disk drive in a desktop. -
IBM's SABRE
SABRE was a reservation system tested in 1960 with the intent to help American Airlines. It made its debut in 1964 with the help of telephone lines. The program linked about 2 thousand terminals in 65 cities to a couple of IBM 7090 computers. This idea leads to the reservation systems we have in place today. -
Signetics RAM
Electronics Magazine shows off the first 8-bit RAM developed by Signetics. It was designed for the SDS Sigma 7 mainframe. This development was one of the earliest semiconductor memory devices to be in a computer system. -
Minnow
IBM's "Minnow" was a development of a read-only floppy disk. It was simply designed to load microcode on a controller for an IBM 3330 Direct Acess Storage Facility. The floppy disk was an 8 inch, 80 kilobytes, and the first disk drive. The development of a read/write floppy disk soon became an industry standard.