Pre-LTO oral history panel | 102795417 | Computer History Museum

Description

This oral history records the contributions of Messrs. Thomas Albrecht, Robert Biskeborn, Timothy Chainer and John Teale to the invention through prototyping of key technologies that enabled the family of Linear Tape Open (LTO) tape drives. No one has yet invented data storage technology that could replace magnetic tape-recording for archiving of information. Magnetic tape continues to offer, by far, the lowest cost of data storage. Until recently this product space used two classes of devices, Digital Linear Tape (DLT) and LTO. However, LTO proved to be superior and as of 2019 LTO has achieved 100% market share. The success of LTO is based on dramatic increases of data track densities achieved via use of Time-based Servo, Longitudinal Position Encoding, Flexure-based Actuators; Flat Head-to-Tape Interfaces and adaptation of three generations of film-based magnetoresistive (MR) disk heads. Impetus for these developments originated in the early 1990s in an IBM Research effort led by Dr. Jim Eaton which was funded by IBM Tucson.

Dr. Timothy Chainer, following the Flexural Actuator project went on to lead a team on the invention of Self -Servowrite for hard disk drives (HDDs). This novel method of writing the servo information avoided a significant cost increase in producing HDDs.

This oral history complements another LTO-related oral history entitled “IBM tape history – session 4: LTO virtual company panel” (transcript catalog number: 102738023; video catalog number: 10278022).

Date

2019-10-11

Contributor

Albrecht, Thomas, Interviewee

Bajorek, Chris, Moderator

Biskeborn, Robert, Interviewee

Chainer, Timothy, Interviewee

Teale, John, Interviewee

Publisher

Computer History Museum

Place of Publication

Mountain View, CA

Extent

69 p.

Format

PDF

Subject

Magnetic storage; Magnetic tape technology; Linear Tape-Open technology (LTO); magnetoresistive heads (MR); Giant Magnetoresistance (GMR); Tunnelign Magnetoresistive Heads; Time-based Servo; Longitudinal position encoding; flexur-based actuators

Collection Title

CHM Oral History Collection

Credit

Computer History Museum

Lot Number

X9180.2020

Artifact Details

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