
5 MB from IBM in 1956 - wf902
https://www.instagram.com/p/_P7IS0KdCv/?taken-by=acremades
======
greenyoda
The caption on the photo doesn't say what's actually in the crate. However,
1956 is when the first IBM 350 disk drive was shipped, and it stored 5 million
characters:

 _" The IBM 350 disk storage unit, the first disk drive, was announced by IBM
as a component of the IBM 305 RAMAC computer system on September 13, 1956. ...
The first engineering prototype 350 disk storage shipped to Zellerbach in June
1956 ...

Its design was motivated by the need for real time accounting in business. The
350 stored 5 million 6-bit characters (3.75 MB). It had fifty 24-inch (610 mm)
diameter disks with 100 recording surfaces. Each surface had 100 tracks. The
disks spun at 1200 RPM. Data transfer rate was 8,800 characters per second. An
access mechanism moved a pair of heads up and down to select a disk pair (one
down surface and one up surface) and in and out to select a recording track of
a surface pair. Several improved models were added in the 1950s. The IBM RAMAC
305 system with 350 disk storage leased for $3,200 per month."_ [1]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_IBM_magnetic_disk_d...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_IBM_magnetic_disk_drives#IBM_350)
(includes photos of the device)

------
MaysonL
Back in 1970, I worked at a place that had a box about half that size that
contained 1 megabyte of core memory – which cost about a megabuck at the time.
It was a third-party addon to the 360/50.

