The world’s first hard-drive and The world’s first computer-to-computer connection. All on today’s On This Day from TEST Huddle.
1956 – The World’s First Hard-Drive
The world’s first hard disk drive is created at International Business Machines (IBM) by a team lead by Reynold B. Johnson. The device named the IBM 305 RAMAC (Random Access Method of Accountingand Control) holds 5MB of data on fifty 24-inch disks which spin at 1,200 rpm in a case roughly the size of two refrigerators for at a price of about US$10,000 per megabyte. IBM leased the computers for US$3,200 per month.
1969 – The World’s First Computer to Computer Connection
At 10:30pm on this day in 1969, the first computer-to-computer connection in history is established over a 50kbps AT&T phone line. The connection is made between a SDS Sigma 7 operated by a team under Professor Leonard Kleinrock at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and an SDS 940 operated by a team under Douglas Englebart at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI), marking the birth of ARPANET, the first wide area (long distance) packet switching network and the precursor to the later Internet. Both computers are connected to the phone line through an Interface Message Processor (IMP). Leonard Kleinrock later describes the initial connection as seeing individual letters being sent by the team at UCLA and the team at SRI confirming if they had received it on their screens.
Images: Wikipedia
