01
 
02
 
03
 
04
 
05

Magnetic Drums

Magnetic drum

The drum's read/write heads are in the open top cover. Its surface has been scratched by misaligned heads.

Magnetic Drums

The Cold War was gathering steam in 1948. Eager to enhance America’s code-breaking capabilities, the U.S. Navy contracted with Engineering Research Associates (ERA) for a stored program computer. The result was Atlas, completed in 1950.

Atlas used magnetic drum memory, which stores information on the outside of a rotating cylinder coated with magnetic iron (ferromagnetic) material and circled by read/write heads in fixed positions.

Earlier drum systems included a 1932 non-rotating model by Austrian inventor Gustav Tauschek. Faster spinning drums improved data rates and cut waiting times to locate needed data.

English Electric DEUCE

These two Digital Electronic Universal Computing Engines at the Royal Aircraft Establishment could work (and even sing) together.

View Artifact Detail
1 2
Deuce memory drum

The Deuce computer was an early vacuum tube machine based on a design by British mathematician and WWII code breaker Alan Turing. This drum memory held 32 kB.

View Artifact Detail
1 2 3 4
ERA Magnetic Storage Systems

ERA began making magnetic drums for Navy cryptography computers, but soon started designing and building electronic computers of its own.

View Artifact Detail
Thomas Edison with Ediphone dictating machine

Thomas Edison's Ediphone was like a drum memory for sound. It had a tube to speak in and the voice vibrations would be recorded on a wax cylinder. A secretary would then type up the recording and shave the used layer of the cylinder so it could be reused.

View Artifact Detail
1 2
Phonograph recording cylinder

These wax tubes for a cylinder phonograph could record and play back speech or music. Cylinders were still used in offices for dictation machines until the end of WWII.

View Artifact Detail
DEUCE computer

Dr. Ron Smart monitors the console of the drum-based DEUCE computer at the University of New South Wales, Australia.

View Artifact Detail
Early Engineering Research Associates (ERA) employees

The ERA founders worked for the Navy on cryptanalysis during World War II, and continued making special code breaking machines for them afterwards.

View Artifact Detail
Tauschek patent

Austrian Gustav Tauschek patented an early form of magnetic drum memory in 1932. IBM bought the rights to this and several other Tauschek inventions.

View Artifact Detail
06
 
07
 
08
 
09
 
10
 
11
 
12
 
13
 
14
 
15
 
16
 
17
 
18
 
19
 
20
 
21
 
22
 
23
 
24
 
25
 
26
 
27