Blog: Richard Hackathorn

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Fifty Years Ago Today

It was fifty years ago today! You ask.. What was?

At the IBM San Jose Lab, the RAMAC computer was unveiled. It was the first machine with magnetic disk storage. Before this introduction, data was stored on sequential magnetic tape or, worst, paper tape. It weighted over one ton, had 50 spinning platters, held 5MB of data, and cost $50,000.

Trivial quiz: What does RAMAC stand for? Don't cheat... Do you know? If you know, comment on this blog. Win a free drink at the next conference, courtesy of yours truly.

So, why the big fuss for Business Intelligence? Without the evolution of the random-access hard disk, BI would not have existed. And, I would probably be selling paper tape readers today! The whole concept of a single consistent view of business reality as embodied in the enterprise data warehouse would be a distance dream. Large enterprises would be totally ineffective in a global economy. And, globalisation would be confined to regions, at best.

What is amazing about the past fifty years is the dramatic evolution of disk technology. As quoted by Dan Fost of the San Francisco Chronicle, Dave Wickersham, COO of Seagate, compared hard disks to automobiles. "A car in 1956 cost about $2,500, could hold five people, weighted a ton, and could go as fast as 100 mph. If the auto industry had kept pace with disk drives, a car today would cost less than $25, hold 160,000 people, weight half a pound, and travel up to 940 mph." Amazing...

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