OT: Who? What? Was: Re: Origin of "partition" in storage devices

[wrcooke at wrcooke.net]

> On 02/01/2022 4:08 PM Chuck Guzis via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
> 
> 
> 

> Good grief, it took DEC all that time? CDC was doing it in the 1960s.
> Had to, because of the wide variety of RMS available. I think that
> one of the early 2311 clone drives (854?) used 256-byte (8 bit byte)
> hard-sectored media, which isn't very friendly to systems with 60 bit
> words. I recall that several sectors were used to create a logical
> 60-bit word addressable sector, with a substantial part of the last
> sector of a logical PRU left unused.
> 
> --Chuck

LTA predates that considerably and is the earliest I am aware of.

LTA (Logical Tooth Addressing) was created in the 1850's by Babbage to avoid the "shaft, gear, tooth" addressing he had been using in his "store."  The teeth of all gears were numbered sequentially (starting at 0 of course) across all the gears and shafts.  He even kept a few spare gears in a drawer for wear leveling.  

It's believed the idea actually originated with Ada since it made her task much easier.

Will