A Brief History of Data Storage
summary
Starts at clay tablets from 1750 BCE that survive fire but required decades of linguistics to decode, traces punch‑card automation from Jacquard to Herman Hollerith and the 80‑column legacy, shows drum and core memory (and Apollo’s core rope ROM that works), follows floppy disks to 1957 hard drives with 3.75 MB and modern shingled magnetic recording used in a Scaleway bunker, warns magnetic tape nearly lost Viking Mars data, and points to future DNA data and 5D optical glass as ultra‑durable but encoding‑dependent.
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chapters (18)
- 0:00Introduction to data storage
- 5:27Ancient storage methods
- 7:06Manuscripts and durability
- 7:56Textiles and technology
- 8:58Mechanization of weaving
- 11:33The origin of punch cards
- 12:18Film photography
- 14:01Vinyl records and discs
- 15:26Early computing and IBM
- 18:17Magnetic drum memory
- 19:39Magnetic core memory
- 20:28Floppy disk history
- 22:00Optical storage evolution
- 25:45Magnetic tape storage
- 27:35Hard drive mechanics
- 30:35Flash memory systems
- 48:08Future storage innovations
- 50:055D glass and time crystals
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