Monday, September 07, 2009

How big is 5 megabytes?

This is a post I'd missed first time around.

The volume and size of 5MB of memory storage in 1956. Not GB, but MB.

8 comments:

Timo Lehtinen said...

5MB is enough for all of us.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Exactly. It covers one photo on a small camera, in JPG (not RAW). Which forces you to think more about what you photograph before you have to take the forklift home to upload it to Arpanet.

Bronislaus Janulis / Framewright said...

Ahh, digital. I have a couple of 500GB drives I use for back-up, each being about an eighth of the size of my first, external drive, 40MB, to go with my 4MB of ram loaded Mac Plus.

About the only thing I miss about those early computers is the game: Shuffle Puck Cafe.

Anonymous said...

How about the 2 GB memory card for my digital camera, about the size of a stamp? Where is that thing anyway? It must have fallen out of my pocket when I got the tissue out to blow my nose. Oh well, I guess I'll have to spend another $10 at Walmart and get a new one... Can you imagine shopping at Walmart in those days? "Honey, I'm taking the 18 wheelers to the store, I need about 4 GB for my new camera..."

Anonymous said...

Original hard disks were pretty interesting, actually. Data was written on the outside of this big döner-kebab-like metal cylinder. I always thought it was a genius thing to do!

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Sounds durable, but takes up a lot of space, innit?

Pascal [P-04referent] said...

Less durable than my stamp collection.
But also takes up less space than my stamp collection.

Maybe it wasn't such a wise choice to start a thorough collection of ancient Babylonian postage stamps, back in the day they made them on clay tablets... The Roman ones are engraved on marble. Those from Egypt, carved on massive cubes of stone. And the very first royal mail seal -my prize item- is a 39 foot tall granite pillar engraved in the shape of King Yabal's emblem: a Leviathan's baculum (phallus bone). Life-sized.

I definitely need a new ziggurat to store everything...

I hear that in middle-ages copyist monks used to engrave DVDs by hand, using a jeweler's eyepiece and a very tiny chisel. Explains why backing up information took a lot of time back in the day. 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0.......
I've got a few of them medieval compact discs. Made out of amber. Lasers sure helped miniaturize those, now we don't need to read them with torches any more.
They're in the bomber hangar, in my back garden, next to the Atlantean temple and city walls.

Maintenance is also a major annoyance. I've got a real pest problem. Adventurer traps don't seem to be efficient enough in keeping them in check, it's a regular invasion. SHOO! SHOO! (Dang critters!)
Scrooge McDuck? He had it easy!

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

"a very tiny chisel. Explains why backing up information took a lot of time back in the day. 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 1, 0, "

LOL!