Numerical information recorded by notches carved in bone and wood

Record keeping system used by the Incas is more than 4,000 years old

Joseph Jacquard’s punched cards program patterns on a weaving loom

Michael Faraday discovers two fundamental components of magnetic storage

Valdemar Poulsen records Emperor Franz Josef of Austria at Paris exhibition

Gustav Tauschek patents cylinder coated with ferromagnetic material

AEG debuts the Magnetophon commercial audio tape recorder in Berlin

Cathode Ray Tube electrostatic effect enables random access memory

Mercury-filled delay line provides memory for first stored-program computer

NBS researcher‘s notched disk memory informs the RAMAC design

Univac introduces magnetic tape media data storage machine

Data processing systems integrate multiple forms of input and output

Solid-state devices improve speed, size & reliability of memory systems

Magnetic cores provide a fast, reliable solution for computer main memory

Quadruplex recorders serve as professional video standard for 25 years

Model 350 RAMAC unit stored the equivalent of 3.75 megabytes of data on 50 large disks

Commercial success of the "slider" in the IBM 1301 established a model for the industry

Bryant Computer Products introduces units storing up to 205 MB

Univac 1107 Thin-Film Memory computer announced

Interchangable packs spawn Plug Compatible Manufacturers (PCM)

NCR CRAM was the “first commercially significant Bulk Storage Subsystem”

Fixed semiconductor ROMs offer high density and low cost per bit

IBM 2310 Ramkit pioneered HDD technology in small computer applications

Recording density advances permit economical massive online storage

Magneto-Optical capacity outstripped magnetic disks in the 1980s

Plug-compatible (PCM) disk-drive manufacturers proliferate

Intel DRAM is the first significant semiconductor challenge to core memory

User-erasable, programmable ROMs support microprocessor system design

IBM 3330 incorporated important hardware and software advances

Small, removable flexible disks replace punched cards and paper tape

MCA and Philips develop laser technology for distributing consumer movies

IBM 3340 employs new low-cost, low-load, landing read/write heads

First significant departure from the IBM HDD technology & media path

5.25 and 3.5-inch drives and media meet personal computer needs

Disk drive interfaces either become a standard or fail in the marketplace

Experimental technologies that have been tried, tested and found wanting

Academic, government & industry research consortia established

Photolithography enables a new generation of high-density disk drives

Small business computers require smaller physical size HDDs

CD-ROM emerges for software & video game distribution

Personal computer boosts HDD output to new levels of production

Carbon coating enhances reliability of magnetic film media

VAXcluster allows sharing across a pool of block-level storage

PRML techniques enhance magnetic media storage capacity

Magnetoresistive head & new media increase speed and density

Redundant Arrays of Independent Disks outperform mainframe drives

2.5” and smaller HDDs serve portable needs from notebooks to music players

MR, GMR & TMR heads deliver successive increases in storage density

Flash non-volatile memory developed for mass storage systems

Recordable CDs replace magnetic floppy disks for portable storage

One of the world's fastest growing industries through 1996

HP, IBM, and Seagate form Linear Tape-Open (LTO) consortium

Blue diode invention earns Japanese physicists Nobel Prize in Physics

USB Flash “sticks” displace disks for portable computer data storage

PMR raises disk drive areal density above 100 gigabits per square inch

Amazon announces remote access to low cost bulk storage

Helium technology allows much more of your precious data to be stored cheaply in the “cloud”

New technologies promise densities up to 10 terabits per square inch

Projection drove advances in semiconductor and magnetic storage