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The cassette tape was a common low-cost and low-performance mass storage device for a generation of home computers. Home computers were a class of microcomputer that existed from 1977 to about 1995. During this time it made economic sense for manufacturers to make microcomputers aimed at the home user.
In the U.S.A., an Apple II is a home computer; the IBM PC in its smaller configurations is a home computer; the Macintosh is a home computer. Home computers use floppy disks for mass storage and perform useful functions like word processing and income tax preparation as well as playing games.
The IBM 1301 Disk Storage Unit, [11] announced in 1961, introduced the usage of heads having self-acting air bearings (self-flying heads) with one head per each surface of the disks. It was followed in 1963 by the IBM 1302, with 4 times the capacity. Also in 1961, Bryant Computer Products introduced its 4000 series disk drives.
This was the first rotating drum storage device in existence. [73] 1948 June 21 United Kingdom: the Manchester Baby was built at the University of Manchester. It ran its first program on this date. It was the first computer to store both its programs and data in RAM, as modern computers do.
The history of the personal computer as a mass-market consumer electronic device began with the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s. A personal computer is one intended for interactive individual use, as opposed to a mainframe computer where the end user's requests are filtered through operating staff, or a time-sharing system in which one large processor is shared by many individuals.
Drum memory was a magnetic data storage device invented by Gustav Tauschek in 1932 in Austria. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] Drums were widely used in the 1950s and into the 1960s as computer memory . Many early computers, called drum computers or drum machines, used drum memory as the main working memory of the computer. [ 3 ]
The MITS Altair, the first commercially successful microprocessor kit, was featured on the cover of Popular Electronics magazine in January 1975. It was the world's first mass-produced personal computer kit, as well as the first computer to use an Intel 8080 processor. It was a commercial success with 10,000 Altairs being shipped.
The IBM 1360 Photo-Digital Storage System, or PDSS, was an online archival storage system for large data centers. It was the first storage device designed from the start to hold a terabit of data (128 GB ).