data stored in moving rust, was Re: Remembering RAMAC

OK, Eric was right; while an hour's perusal of a small selection of books is hardly research, it seems that there are few-enough root documents to backup Eric's claim that IBM developed the first disk drive as we know it today. I stand corrected. My LGP-21 (1963) has a rotating disk but fixed crashed heads. It seems very likely that it wasn't the first of it's type. It is easy enough to imagine one existing before RAMAC, though I would not argue that it's a "disk" in the RAMAC (or modern) sense. It's simply a recirculating multi-kilo-bit shift register main memory coincidentally based upon similar technology. Booth's paper magnetic disk is pretty interesting though. There's a web page that talks about "Booth's floppy disk" -- this sort of inane damage is what ruins things. It wasn't a goddamned floppy goddamned disk. Floppy goddamned disks are a modern portable removable media, Booth's appears to be simply the use of paper as a good substrate to apply a magnetic material. THere's no indication the paper disk could be removed floppies aren't made of paper.