You know that nice 250-megabyte batch of digital photos you took at junior's birthday party last week? Yeah, the batch you're now storing on an SD card the size of a postage stamp, with plenty of room to spare? The one you uploaded to your Flickr account in about three minutes using your symmetrical FiOS connection? Well in 1979, a similar batch of data would have totally filled this hard disk: 

Royal Pingdom has posted a fascinating photo essay called The history of computer data storage, in pictures. It really is wild to see how far we've come, from the vacuum tubes of the 1940s, to punch cards, magnetic drums, cassette tapes, laser discs and beyond. A fun read, especially for those old enough to remember when floppy discs actually were "floppy."

As data capacity keeps getting bigger and bigger, on smaller and smaller storage systems, who knows what the future holds? Regardless, the all-fiber FiOS network will have plenty of bandwidth to handle the country's data transfer needs for decades to come. (Those stylin' white jumpsuits, though, you'll have to pick up on your own.)

[Royal Pingdom, via Gizmodo]

(Photo: Royal Pingdom)

Posted by Jim 2.0 | tagged: bandwidth, FiOS, photos