data stored in moving rust, was Re: Remembering RAMAC

On Fri, 27 May 2005, John Allain wrote: What? And take all the fun out of it?! Seriously -- past some trivial level of discussion this is absolutely called for. I don't trust computer-history books, with a few exceptions (eg. Randall, but he doesn't follow specific technologies). They're all filled with parrot talk. There are some very early references here, I do not have the refered-to docs unless stated, some really seem worth following up on. I won't summarize my summary. I'm in my lab and will see what I can find. NOTABLE: Booth's 1947+ paper magnetic disk Harvard Computation Laboratory, various Cohen, drum, 1950 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! "Digital computer components and circuits", RK Richards, 1957. In 'storage on a magnetic surface' p348, ref to IBM disk project (no name/model). Flying heads (bernoulli). Mentions a multi-disk system where non-referenced disks are stopped, to save energy of pumping all that air. Early EnergyStar anyone? Bibio data: DRUMS: "Magnetic drum digital storage system", AD Booth 1949 [see Booth below]. "Design, construction and performance of a large-scale general-purpose digital computer" BW Pollard, Proccedings AIEE-IRE Comp. Conf., Dec 1951,m pp62-70 published Feb 1952). "Desription of a magnetic drum calculator", Annals of Harvard Computation Lab., Vol 25, 318 pages, 1952. "Engineering description of the ElectroData digital computer", JC Alrich, IRE Transactions on Elec. Comp. Vol EC-4 pp 1-10, March 1955. "The magnetic storage drum on the Ace Pilot Model". DO Clayton et al, 1956. DISKS refs WJCC 1956 Noyes/Dickensen IBM [below] IBM 650 drum (AIEE-IRE-ACM conf, 1954). "Air floating, a new principle in magnetic recrding of information", GE Hagen, 'computers and automation', vol 2 #8 pp23-25, Nov 1953). "The notched-disc memory", J Rabinow, 'electrical engineering', vol 71, pp 745-749, Aug 1952. "magnetic memory device for business amchines", SJ Begun, 'electrical engineering', vol 74, pp 466-469, June 1955. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! MEDIUMS chapter discusses drums at length. Table 14-1 p338 and text coyly discusses a half dozen drum designs, but does not mention models/products; and the footnoted reference is to "STORAGE OF NUMBERS ON MAGNETIC TAPE" Coombs 1947 pamphlet, so I assume this is vaporware. The whole book actually reeks of vapor. A couple of tantalizing references p381: 33. Moore, BL, "magnetic and phosphor coated disks" in Proceedings of a symposium on large-scale digital computing machinery" Harvard Univ. Press, 1948. 37. SHepard, CB, "Transfer between internal and external memory", Annals of the computation lab. of Harvard Univ. Vol XVI pp267-273, 1948. The other 30+ refs apepar to be magnetic tape. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Proc. Western Joint Comp. Conf. 1956 "Magnetic recording head design", AS Hoagland (of UC Berkeley), head design for the IBM 305 magnetic disk file. Ref to authors 1954 AIEE Transactions paper "magnetic drum recording of digital data". "Engineering design of a magnetic-disk random-access memory", T. Noyes & WE Dickenson, IBM. 50-platter, 5,000,000 character storage. 24" platters. BIG F'ING MONSTER. 1.5 HP motor, 1200 rpm. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! "Preparation of programs for an electronic digital computer" Wilkes 1957 edition. I don't know if this is in the 51 edition, but EDSAC had a drum added sometime. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Automatic digital calculators, booth and booth, 2nd ed 1956 I don't have AD Booths earlier book. This one mentions his ARC calculator, drum and "disk" memory. Built 1947; completion date not given (see other book). The later APE(x)C machines (annoying variable name) are drum and electromechanical (pin) memory. ARC originally used Fe oxide coated paper, spun vertically (horizontal axle) to keep paper flat; the fixed "C" shaped head passed flux through the paper one side to the other (clearly, only on the very outer edge). Contact heads. Apparently this actually worked. page 133. Capacity must suck. Clearly this is the first magnetic "disk" type storage, though I won't call it a disk in modern terms, but it points out the utter futility of trying to name "firsts". refs "Magnetic drum storage for digital information processing systems", 'Mathematical Tables and other AIds to Computation' (journal), 1950. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Electronic Digital Computers, Franz ALt, 1958 Too new to be revealing, but does mention Rabinow's notched disk system, which is a toroidal "jukebox" for mag disk. Early drum ref: "Magnetic drum storage for digital information processing systems", 'Mathematical Tables and other AIds to Computation' (journal), 1950. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! COMPUTER HANDBOOK, Huskey, 1962 Though it's very late, Huskey always covers previous art/history each chapter, so he's always a great author to follow. AS Hoagland writes about early mag storage; wire (1898), first mag data storage (1947), and drums. Talks of disks as "relatively new" (1962). RAMAC. Air bearing with explicit compressor (non-bernoulli).