5MB in 1966: The Story of 62,500 Punched Cards
2025-02-19
In 1966, storing a mere 5MB of data required a staggering 62,500 punched cards—a stark contrast to today's instant access to vast information. Each card held a few hundred bytes, and loading 5MB took four days. This compares dramatically to modern flash drives and cloud computing. Giant mainframe computers, primarily used by governments and large corporations, relied on this system. The shift from punched cards to magnetic tape and hard drives marked a giant leap in computing technology, highlighting the incredible progress made in modern computing.
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