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Here's a great picture of a 1956-vintage IBM hard disk being loaded onto a plane: https://www.businessinsider.com/picture-of-ibm-hard-drive-on-airplane-2014-1?r=US&IR=T
It had a massive capacity of 5MB, it weighed about a ton, and it cost $3,200 per month to lease.
By comparison I have a 1TB SSD in my PC which weighs about 100g, and it cost me about £100.
So my SSD has 200,000 times more capacity; it's 10,000 times lighter; and it's about 800 times cheaper (assuming £1=$2 in 1956, and assuming that purchase price is about 50x monthly leasing cost). Or make that 20,000 times cheaper allowing for inflation.
So overall my SSD is 200,000 x 10,000 x 20,000 = 40,000,000,000,000 times better. That's broadly in line with what Moore's Law might suggest: it's equivalent to a doubling in capability (capacity / size / cost) every 17 months, maintained for 63 years.
Remarkable.
EDIT - Link fixed. Thanks @Box Brownie
It had a massive capacity of 5MB, it weighed about a ton, and it cost $3,200 per month to lease.
By comparison I have a 1TB SSD in my PC which weighs about 100g, and it cost me about £100.
So my SSD has 200,000 times more capacity; it's 10,000 times lighter; and it's about 800 times cheaper (assuming £1=$2 in 1956, and assuming that purchase price is about 50x monthly leasing cost). Or make that 20,000 times cheaper allowing for inflation.
So overall my SSD is 200,000 x 10,000 x 20,000 = 40,000,000,000,000 times better. That's broadly in line with what Moore's Law might suggest: it's equivalent to a doubling in capability (capacity / size / cost) every 17 months, maintained for 63 years.
Remarkable.
EDIT - Link fixed. Thanks @Box Brownie
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