Evolution of storage media. History of information storage Interesting facts from the history of storage media

Information carriers of the past. March 31st, 2014

Bronze and DVD, what can they have in common?

People don’t want to accept the fact that there were civilizations here before them with quite advanced technologies. Most people admit that they existed, but almost no one considers the fact that there is a lot left of them.
On one forum that I respect, a topic was once raised, the meaning of which boiled down to the fact that they were trying to discuss the issue of storing information. In the sense that it (information) is stored for a long time and does not deteriorate. After all, paper smolders, sharpening stone pages with a chisel takes a long time and requires too much labor. Electronic media, too, will sooner or later turn into dust.
But since we have heard about other developed civilizations, why does no one admit that they had successfully resolved this issue at that time? And that all you have to do is want to look for these solutions. Look for those flash drives and disks that are scattered in abundance here and there. Try reading them already.
Look at those same bronze Chinese mirrors. And there is a great deal of this “vinyl” out there. But things didn’t go further than letting bunnies in.
Or this information carrier, from here:

The Inexplicable: An ancient “genetic disk” explains in pictures the phases of the origin of life

Here is the most important and most incredible artifact that was found in Colombia. This is the so-called "Genetic disk". It is made of Lydite, a very strong stone. In terms of strength, it is not inferior to granite, but the structure of the stone is layered, so it is impossible to make such a disk from such material these days. Diameter - 27 cm.

On this disc there are several images of those processes that in ordinary life can only be viewed under a microscope. On the left side of the disc at 11 o'clock, you can see an image of a man's testicle without sperm and with sperm, apparently the process of sperm generation is shown here.

On the left, approximately in the hour direction, you can see several already born spermatozoa. The image is still incomprehensible to us. A more detailed study by biologists is needed.

In this fragment of the "Genetic Disk" the images look like in real life, for comparison, the picture taken by the researchers is presented.

On the back of the disk at the top there is an embryo in several stages of development. and ending with what a newborn baby looks like.

We also see on the disk at six o'clock the image of a man and a woman.

Around three o'clock on the disk you can see images of a man, a woman and a child, the strange thing here is the way the human head is depicted. If this is not a stylistic image, then what species do these people belong to?

(Based on an interview with Klaus Dona, who organized the Avalon project.
Ludite - this stone is as hard as granite, but its structure is such that it is very fragile. The “genetic disk” shows the phases of the birth and development of the fetus, including a graphic image of sperm and a fertilized egg. As is known, for the first time 25 years ago in Sweden it was possible take a photo of what such cells look like inside a woman, using high-tech devices and a microscope. I think that just a few thousand years ago such knowledge was not available. In the same collection - skillfully made devices, presumably for medical purposes. In Vienna, we analyzed the material from which. These artifacts are made. This material, black in color, reminiscent of metal, is undoubtedly Ludite. The most experienced specialist in working with precious stones in Vienna, after many hours of examination, told us that he has no idea how these objects were made. , by whom and when. Nowadays, with the same materials, it is impossible to do such work.
In Colombia, the archeology committee refused to recognize these objects as being of historical value.
Due to the specific nature of his work, Klaus Donaus managed to put together more than 400 items that cannot be explained in any way on the basis of the modern Social Contract.

As the curator of the Art Exhibition of the House of Habsburg, Austria, he was initially skeptical about “artifacts”, having encountered with his own eyes hundreds of real objects that did not fit into the temporal history of mankind, he went further.
And I became convinced that in reality modern science, the entire system of society, is structured in such a way as to hide information, facts, objects - which are in no way possible to understand or do... even in our “technically developed” society.
It is a rare example when a person independently begins to explore, rather than reject, and changes his belief system in the process of independent search and comprehension).

There are also such artifacts.

85% of the territory of Russia is unsuitable for permanent comfortable residence of the population. The agricultural season lasts 2-3 months in most of Russia (in Europe and the USA it is 8-9 months. The average annual grain yield in Russia on non-chernozem soil is 17 centners (in Germany, France and England on non-chernozem soil - 70, in Ireland - 85...
...If you travel to Japan, don't take cough syrups with you. In Japan, they are considered prescription drugs, and bringing them into the country can get you deported or spend significant time in jail...
...In 1963, IBM introduced the first hard drive with removable disk- IBM 1311. It was a set of interchangeable disks. Each set consisted of six disks with a diameter of 14 inches, containing up to 2 MB of information...

Russia in numbers

 85% of the territory of Russia is unsuitable for permanent comfortable residence of the population

 The agricultural season lasts 2-3 months in most of Russia (8-9 months in Europe and the USA)

 17 centners average annual grain yield in Russia on non-chernozem (in Germany, France and England on non-chernozem - 70, in Ireland - 85)

 more than 20% of all heroin in the world, according to the UN, is consumed by Russia, this is the first place in the world in heroin consumption

 Russia ranks third in the world in terms of the number of drug addicts, followed by Afghanistan and Iran.

 2.5 billion dollars a year are spent by children and young people in Russia on drugs.

 100 people die every day in Russia due to drug overdose.

 only 1% of the water consumed by Russians, according to a study by the Ministry of Health and Social Development of the Russian Federation, meets international quality standards.

 from 30 to 90%, depending on the industry, is the turnover of counterfeit and counterfeit products in Russia

 The country ranks 154th in the world in terms of the level of perception of corruption, approximately on the same level with Tajikistan, Papua New Guinea, Congo and Cambodia.

 50 tons of explosives were seized at Russian airports last year.

 1030 terrorist attacks were committed in Russia in 2009, in 2010 - 779, already 162 - in 2011.

 1.5% of the Russian population owns 50% of the national wealth.

 300 shelter beds for 30,000 homeless people in St. Petersburg.

 41 billionaires sit in the State Duma and the Federation Council

 Russian billionaires pay 13% of taxes (in France and Sweden their colleagues pay 57%, in Denmark - 61%, in Italy - 66%)

 68% of Russians with above-average incomes want their children to study and work abroad

 10% of the country’s population, according to the Ministry of Health and Social Development, are disabled.

 85% of Russians do not see the opportunity to influence government decision-making

 69.8% of Russians feel ashamed of their country

 57% of the total population are people of retirement and pre-retirement age. Directly pensioners of them, according to
President Medvedev, 40 million.

 99,955,000 people exist at the expense of the budget and the solvent part of the population

 About 23 million Russian citizens profess Islam.

 only 3% of those who consider themselves Orthodox (i.e., only about 3 million people) lead a religious life; the majority do not even know the basics of the doctrine.

 a third of Russians believe that a person’s destiny can be influenced with the help of magic. That is, even those citizens who call themselves Orthodox Christians believe in witchcraft.

 more than 40% of products in Moscow, according to Rospotrebnadzor, are counterfeit and smuggled.

 in Russia the risk of dying from injuries is 4 times higher than in Europe. Mortality rates in Russia from injuries are comparable to countries such as Angola and Liberia.

 49% of elevators in St. Petersburg and 35% in Moscow, according to the Ministry of Emergency Situations, operate after they have served their service life.

 2 square meters of luxury housing can be bought in Moscow for a kilogram of gold. In the primary luxury housing market, according to the results of the 1st quarter of 2010, it was recorded at $19,881. The most expensive new luxury apartments in the capital are located in the Patriarch's Ponds area: the asking price in this area is $33,950 per 1 sq. m. meter. In second place is a house in the Malaya Dmitrovka area with a square price of $32,520.

 10 times more expensive than what mortgage loans for housing cost Russians for Europeans.

 about 5 million chronic alcoholics in Russia, even more drunkards. Excessive alcohol consumption (particularly by men) has been responsible for nearly half of all deaths in people aged 15 to 54 in the past few years.

 Russia, as stated by the Minister of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, ranks second in the world in the distribution of counterfeit medicines; 82% of medicines in Russian pharmacies are counterfeit or do not meet their expiration dates.

 Russia spends 42.2% per year on maintaining the state apparatus (African countries spend 25.7% for the same purposes, Latin American countries - 19.2%, developed countries 11.1%)

 Russia spends 15% on social needs per year (African countries spend 50.1% for the same purposes, Latin American countries - 64.1%, developed countries 70.3%)

 According to preliminary calculations, Russia will spend $46 billion on the 2014 Olympics

 26 million Russians officially do not work anywhere, over 4 million are homeless.

 Russia ranks third in the world after Iraq and Somalia in terms of the number of requests submitted by its citizens for asylum abroad.

 air travel in Russia ends in disasters twice as often as in Africa, and 13 times more often than the world average.

 Russia ranks first in the world in terms of the number of divorces, according to the UN Demographic Yearbook.

 8 million abortions a year are performed in Russia.

 30% of children in Russia are born out of wedlock.

 Russia ranks first in the world in terms of the level of teenage suicides, and this is more than 3 times higher than the average suicide rate among teenagers in the world.

 Russia ranks first in the world in terms of the level of intentional murders.

 Almost 1 million prisoners are held in Russian prisons. Only prisoners in institutions of the GUIN of the Ministry of Justice are included in official statistics. The Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation has jurisdiction over institutions for detainees, suspects, accused and defendants. This is a temporary detention facility. 4 million people pass through temporary detention facilities every year.

 60-70% of crimes in Russia are committed on domestic grounds.

 700 thousand orphans in modern Russia, this is more than it was after the Great Patriotic War.

 Russia ranks first in the world in terms of the number of pedophiles. We are the only country in the world where 50% of total sexual crimes are against children. Every third rape victim in Russia is a small child.

The most ridiculous punishments

If you travel to Japan, don't take cough syrups with you. In Japan, they are considered prescription drugs, and bringing them into the country can get you deported or spend significant time in jail.

10th: In Canada, it is illegal to post election results on Facebook and Twitter before exit polls have closed. For violating this law, you can be fined up to 25 thousand dollars or imprisoned for 5 years.

9th place: In Denmark you will be arrested for wearing a mask in public places. The law was adopted so that the authorities had the opportunity to consider who exactly goes to protests.

8th place: For ridiculing the King of Thailand or his photograph, you will go to prison for fifteen years for insulting the monarchy.

7th place: In Kansas, you shouldn't start abruptly at a traffic light. Squealing tires on asphalt can land you in jail for 30 days.

#6: Don't park in handicapped spaces in South Carolina! In 2006, a young man guilty of this offense was sentenced to wear a sign on his chest that read, “I’m not disabled, I was just parked there, sorry!”

5th place: In Malawi, those who “impersonate fortune tellers, disturb the peace in cemeteries or offend a woman’s sense of decency” are subject to punishment.

4th place: Until recently, in Shandong Province in China, if you used the Internet too much, you could be sent to a clinic where you would be treated with electric shock. The Ministry of Health repealed this law in July 2009.

3rd place: Singapore is famous for its high fines for everything. For example, if you bring a foul-smelling durian fruit onto public transport, you will have to pay a $3,500 fine. And if you overstay your visa, you will be beaten with rods - rattan sticks four feet long and half an inch thick, soaked in water.

2nd place: If you were a tailor living in Afghanistan, you would get jail time for taking measurements of female clients. And if you were a woman who wore nail polish, your fingers would be cut off.

1st place: In China, in case of fraud, bribery, or other abuses, you risk receiving a death sentence. As the head of the company, who in 2007 was sentenced to death for a major financial fraud. He lured gullible investors with a fake program to grow giant ants and earned $390 million from it.

10 facts about smells

10th place: Although the American astronauts carefully cleaned their spacesuits before returning from the Moon to the ship, a little lunar dust still remained on them. In the spacecraft, the astronauts determined that lunar dust smelled like gunpowder.

9th place: The characteristic smell of blood is formed as a result of the interaction of human sweat and the iron contained in the blood.

8th place: The characteristic “metallic” smell of coins is formed as a result of sweat getting on the surface of the metal.

7th place: In the USA, when hiring miners, people who are sensitive to the smell of sweat are rejected. These people feel panic when they smell sweat.

6th place: In perfumery, perfumes have not been infused with fruits and flowers for a long time. Chemistry has entered the fray: yonone gives the smell of violets, terpinsol gives the smell of lilac, and coumarin gives the smell of hay.

5th place: Gases that have no odor can acquire it under pressure. Under a pressure of 13 atmospheres, methane acquires the smell of chloroform.

3rd place: Smells were preserved by North American Indians, who did this in order to remember events and experiences dear to them. The Indians claimed that it was smells that had the best effect on memory.

2nd place: Those who come to the Polish village of Verhoviska are struck by the pungent smell, which is the first companion of the main occupation of the villagers. They grow valerian. There are virtually no conflicts or heart diseases in this village.

1st place: It is believed that the chemical substances mercaptans have the most unpleasant odors. The stench of some of them resembles a bouquet of smells of sewage, garlic, rotten cabbage and onions at the same time. Oddly enough, these substances are widely used in everyday life, and their smell is familiar to almost all of us: this is what household gas smells like. Mercaptans are added to it on purpose. Previously, when this was not done, it was much more difficult to detect a gas leak.

Information storage history

To understand how much a person has advanced in terms of information and, thanks to this, evolved, it is enough to remember paper. Can you imagine a civilization without paper and books? Clay tablets, rolls of papyrus, wooden pages... Agree, it’s not very convenient to study when the textbook weighs a couple of centners and is the size of a living room? It would be a complete epic fail of humanity. We wouldn’t be surfing the Internet now, but would be saving money for the third book in our lives. And the beginning of the electronic information revolution, in the epicenter of which we are now, would never have taken place. After all, it all started with paper...

Paper tape, perforated. Start.

The era of computers began much earlier than most hamsters think. Of course, it didn't have a microprocessor, a video card for Contra Strike, or a webcam for chatting on Skype. In the usual understanding of a computer today, these were not computers at all, but huge, slow-thinking monsters that performed a negligible number of calculations using good old paper. Or rather, paper linen wound on reels. The information on it was stored in the form of neat holes. Early machines like the Colossus Mark I (1944) worked with data in manual mode. The paper perforated tapes were fed as paper into the printer in real time. However, later monster computers were able to read programs from tape, for example, Manchester Mark I (1949), read code from tape and loaded it into a primitive kind of electronic memory. Punched tape has been used to record and read data for over thirty years. This was the beginning of a new era - the information flowering of humanity.

Punch cards

The history of punch cards goes back to the very beginning of the 19th century, when they were used to control looms. In 1890, Herman Hollerith used a punched card to process U.S. census data. It was he who found a company (the future IBM) that used such cards in its calculating machines. In the 1950s, IBM was already making full use of punched cards in its computers for storing and entering data, and soon other manufacturers began to use this medium. At that time, 80-column cards were common, in which a separate column was allocated for one symbol. Some may be surprised, but in 2002 IBM was still developing punch card technology. True, in the 21st century the company was interested in cards the size of a postage stamp, capable of storing up to 25 million pages of information.

Magnetic tape

With the release of the first American commercial computer, UNIVAC I (1951), the era of magnetic film began in the IT industry. The pioneer, as usual, was IBM again, and then others followed suit. The magnetic tape was wound open method onto coils and consisted of a very thin strip of plastic coated with a magnetically sensitive substance. The machines recorded and read data using special magnetic heads built into the reel drive. Magnetic tape was widely used in many computer models (especially mainframes and minicomputers) until the 1980s, when tape cartridges were invented.

The first removable disks

In 1963, IBM introduced the first hard drive with a removable disk - the IBM 1311. It was a set of interchangeable disks. Each set consisted of six disks with a diameter of 14 inches, holding up to 2 MB of information. In the 1970s, many hard drives, such as the DEC RK05, supported such disk sets, and they were especially used by minicomputer manufacturers to sell software.

Tape cartridges

In the 1960s, manufacturers computer hardware learned how to place rolls of magnetic tape into miniature plastic cartridges. They differed from their predecessors, the reels, in their long life, portability and convenience. They became most widespread in the 1970s and 1980s. Like reels, cartridges proved to be very flexible media: if there was a lot of information to be recorded, more tape simply fit into the cartridge. Today, tape cartridges like the 800GB LTO Ultrium are used for large-scale server support, although their popularity has fallen in recent years due to the greater convenience of transferring data from hard drive to hard drive.

Printing on paper

In the 1970s, due to its relatively low cost, they gained popularity. personal computers. However, the existing methods of storing data were unaffordable for many. One of the first PCs, MITS Altair, was supplied without storage media at all. Users were asked to enter programs using special toggle switches on the front panel. Then, at the dawn of the development of “personal computers,” users often had to literally insert sheets of paper with handwritten programs into the computer. Later the programs began to spread to printed form through paper magazines.

Floppy disks

In 1971, the first IBM floppy disk was released. It was an 8-inch flexible disk coated with a magnetic substance, placed in a plastic case. Users quickly realized that for loading data into a computer, “floppy disks” were faster, cheaper, and more compact than stacks of punched cards. In 1976, one of the creators of the first floppy disk, Alan Shugart, proposed its new format - 5.25 inches. It existed in this size until the late 1980s, until Sony's 3.5-inch floppy disks appeared.

Compact cassettes

The compact cassette was invented by Philips, which had the idea to place two small reels of magnetic film in a plastic case. It was in this format that audio recordings were made in the 1960s. HP used such cassettes in its HP 9830 desktop (1972), but at first such cassettes were used as media digital information were not particularly popular. Then, seekers of inexpensive storage media nevertheless turned their gaze towards cassettes, which, thanks to their light hand, remained in demand until the early 1980s. By the way, data on them could be loaded from a regular audio player.

ROM cartridges

A ROM cartridge is a card consisting of a read-only memory (ROM) and a connector enclosed in a hard shell. Scope of application of cartridges - computer games and programs. Thus, in 1976, Fairchild released a ROM cartridge for recording software for the Fairchild Channel F video console. Soon, home computers such as the Atari 800 (1979) or TI-99/4 (1979) were also adapted to use ROM cartridges. ROM cartridges were easy to use, but relatively expensive, which is why they “died.”

The Great Floppy Disk Experiments

In the 1980s, many companies tried to create an alternative to the 3.5-inch floppy disk. One such invention (pictured above in the center) can hardly be called a floppy disk even at a stretch: the ZX Microdrive cartridge consisted of a huge roll of magnetic tape, similar to an eight-track cassette. Another experimenter, Apple, created the FileWare floppy disk (right) that came with the first Apple computer Lisa - the worst device in the company's history according to Network World, as well as the 3-inch Compact Disk (bottom left) and the now rare 2-inch LT-1 floppy disk (top left), used exclusively in the 1989 Zenith Minisport laptop. Other experiments resulted in products that became niche and failed to replicate the success of their 5.25-inch and 3.5-inch predecessors.

Optical disc

The CD, originally used as a digital audio storage medium, owes its birth to a joint project between Sony and Philips and first appeared on the market in 1982. Digital data is stored on this plastic medium in the form of micro-grooves on its mirror surface, and the information is read using a laser head. It turned out that digital CDs are the best suited for storing computer data, and soon the same Sony and Philips finalized the new product. This is how the world learned about CD-ROMs in 1985. Over the next 25 years, the optical disc has undergone a lot of changes, its evolutionary chain including DVD, HD-DVD and Blu-ray. A significant milestone was the introduction of CD-Recordable (CD-R) in 1988, which allowed users to burn data to disc themselves. Late 1990s optical discs, finally fell in price, and finally pushed floppy disks into the background.

Magneto-optical media

Like compact discs, magneto-optical discs are “read” by a laser. However, unlike conventional CDs and CD-Rs, most magneto-optical media allow data to be written and erased repeatedly. This is achieved through the interaction of a magnetic process and a laser when recording data. The first magneto-optical disk was included with the NeXT computer (1988, photo below right), and its capacity was 256 MB. The most famous media of this type is the Sony MiniDisc audio disc (top center, 1992). It also had a “brother” for storing digital data, which was called MD-DATA (top left). Magneto-optical disks are still produced, but due to their low capacity and relatively high cost they have become niche products.

Iomega and Zip Drive

Iomega made its presence felt in the storage media market in the 1980s with the release of Bernoulli Box magnetic disk cartridges with capacities ranging from 10 to 20 MB. A later interpretation of this technology was embodied in the so-called Zip media (1994), which could hold up to 100 MB of information on an inexpensive 3.5-inch disk. I liked the format at an affordable price and good capacity, and Zip disks remained at the crest of popularity until the end of the 1990s. However, CD-Rs that had already appeared at that time could record up to 650 MB, and when their price dropped to a few cents apiece, sales of Zip disks fell catastrophically. Iomega made an attempt to save the technology and developed disks of 250 and 750 MB in size, but by that time CD-Rs had already completely conquered the market. And so Zip became history.

Floppy-disks

The first super floppy disk was released by Insight Peripherals in 1992. The 3.5-inch disk held 21 MB of information. Unlike other media, this format was compatible with earlier traditional 3.5-inch floppy drives. The secret to the high efficiency of such drives lay in the combination floppy disk and optics, that is, data was recorded in a magnetic environment using a laser head, which provided more accurate recording and more tracks, respectively, more space. In the late 1990s, two new formats appeared - Imation LS-120 SuperDisk (120 MB, bottom right) and Sony HiFD (150 MB, top right). The new products became serious competitors to the Iomega Zip drive, but in the end, the CD-R format won over everyone.

A mess in the world of portable media

The resounding success of the Zip Drive in the mid-1990s spawned a mass similar devices, whose manufacturers hoped to grab a piece of the market from Zip. Iomega's main competitors include SyQuest, which first fragmented its own market segment and then ruined its product line with excessive variety - SyJet, SparQ, EZFlyer and EZ135. Another serious, but “murky” rival is Castlewood Orb, which came up with a Zip-like disk with a capacity of 2.2 GB. Finally, Iomega itself has made an attempt to supplement the Zip drive with other types of removable media - from large removable hard drives (1- and 2-GB Jaz Drive) to the miniature 40 MB Clik drive. But none reached the heights of Zip.

Flash is coming

Toshiba invented NAND flash memory in the early 1980s, but the technology only became popular a decade later, following the advent of digital cameras and PDAs. At this time, it begins to be sold in various forms - from large credit cards (intended for use in early handhelds) to CompactFlash, SmartMedia, Secure Digital, Memory Stick and xD Picture Card. Flash memory cards are convenient, first of all, because they have no moving parts. In addition, they are economical, durable and relatively inexpensive with ever-increasing memory capacity. The first CF cards held 2 MB, but now their capacity reaches 128 GB.

How much less?!

The IBM/Hitachi promotional slide shows a tiny Microdrive hard drive. It appeared in 2003 and for some time won the hearts of computer users. The iPod and other media players, which debuted in 2001, are equipped with similar devices based on a rotating disk, but manufacturers quickly became disillusioned with such a drive: it was too fragile, energy-intensive and small in volume. So this format is almost “buried”.

The coming of USB.

In 1998, the USB era began. The undeniable convenience of USB devices has made them an almost integral part of the lives of all PC users. Over the years, they decrease in physical size, but become more capacious and cheaper. Especially popular were “flash drives”, or USB thumb drives, which appeared in 2000 (from the English thumb - “thumb”), so named for their size - about the size of a human finger. Thanks to the large capacity and small size USB drives have become, perhaps, the best storage media invented by mankind.

TOP 10 most dangerous sports

They say that athletes are people who, for the sake of excitement, happily do difficult, but unnecessary work. I might add - and sometimes dangerous. Sport is, of course, good, but some sports are very dangerous, even deadly.

10. Rugby

You'd expect rugby to be way ahead in the rankings, wouldn't you? In this sport you have all the prerequisites for ending up in the hospital. When players are healthy, they push each other as hard as they can, without restrictions. Compared to American football players in protective gear, they look hopelessly vulnerable. Muscle injuries, sprains, ligament tears, numerous fractures.

The statistics are clear: every player receives at least 2-3 minor injuries per match (!). At least 25% of players are seriously injured in every game. So if you want to show off coolly or “prick” the state with sick leave, this is your sport. Otherwise, we advise you to stay a safe distance away from it, preferably in front of the TV.

9. Golf

Yes, that's right. This seemingly harmless sport causes a lot of work for doctors. Even pathologists. Don't believe me? Here are some numbers: Every year, more than 900 people die on the golf course (!). Suffice it to say that in bad weather, golfers do not stop playing, attracting more than 20 percent of the area's lightning strikes with metal clubs onto the flat greens.

Another reason for the high mortality rate in golf is being hit in the head by a heavy ball. You may miss the ball, but a player 100 meters away from you is a very good target for an accidental hit. Bruises and cracks in the head that are carried off the golf course are nothing compared to gouged out eyes, crushed testicles, broken joints, broken spines, etc. So, do you still believe that it is a safe sport for aristocrats with a lot of free time?

8. Cheerleading

Although this type of mass dance is not very common in our country, this type sport is one of the most dangerous in the world. Behind the beautiful façade, however, are astounding numbers: in just one year in the United States, there are more than 25,000 serious injuries (head injuries, neck fractures, collarbones, arms, legs) and 40,000 minor injuries (sprains, abrasions, etc.). To practice this sport, you must have a perfectly designed body to withstand the load of all muscle groups. Just warming up before training is more than 30 minutes. So cheerleading certainly deserves respect...

7. Football

The king of all sports is the most popular around the world, and injuries in it have become commonplace. Whether you're playing professionally or just hanging out with friends on a Sunday, the risk of damage is extremely high. The facts are clear: professional football players suffer 200 injuries per year. In amateur football the figure is lower, but still impressive. If you don't believe me, ask the pharmacy how soothing gels and ointments sold out last weekend.

Fortunately, the death rate in football is not too high. The most common cause of death is fatal heart failure at high workloads; history also remembers cases of players dying from lightning, victims of thrown objects from the stands, or even from hitting their heads into a football goal.

6. Motorsports

Fortunately, as in football, deaths are not common in this sport, mainly due to the serious equipment to ensure the safety of athletes on the track. Fractures and bruises are not the worst thing in motorsports. The real health hazard comes from the enormous stress the body is subjected to during a race.

Enormous centrifugal forces, as well as constant physical and mental stress in the body, literally destroy the human body. Internal organs gradually become seriously damaged, bones and muscles too. During the race, motorcyclists lose 4-5 kg ​​of weight due to the stress and heat of the protective suit. It's the same in Formula 1. So, trust me, most competitors in this sport don't worry about scrapes and cracked bones from a fall, after a few years of racing their body is literally maxed out and in need of a "overhaul."

5. Horse riding

40,000 injuries per year, including deaths. The reasons are clear - while you are in the saddle, everything is fine, but when you fall, only the Lord will help. Fractures of the arms, legs, shoulder joints, pelvis and spine - a whole palette of injuries. And fatal if a horse weighing 800 kg passes through your head with a steel-shod hoof. A beautiful and complex sport in which the relationship between the jockey and the horse must be perfect. Otherwise, you just have to hope for luck, tumble and at least get bruises...

4. Rodeo

Everybody is here " Additional services“- like when riding a horse, but there is something new. Such as a sprained wrist from bull throwing for an average of 8 seconds while on the bull. After the fall... Well, besides the fact that the beast can trample you to death, a “piercing” with one horn is enough to send you to intensive care or the morgue. Every year there are more than 80 thousand victims, despite the fact that this sport is not at all popular throughout the world. It is practically not practiced here, but in some European countries it is gaining momentum. So - if you ever need to come into contact with this sport, choose to be a spectator.

3. Hockey

Hockey = broken teeth. At least. Everyone has seen hockey players whose teeth are constantly knocked out in their mouths. Why don't they fix them? Well, it's just that tooth decay in hockey is so common that dentists can't keep up. Rubber mouth protectors do not help, nor does a protective helmet designed to protect the upper part of the head.

Injuries have become commonplace in hockey. Just playing hockey is like playing with a lighter at a gas station. Serious injuries can happen literally at any moment - from an opponent, from hitting a protective wall, on the ice, from a hockey stick, or a puck. It is not surprising that the legendary Wayne Gretzky compared this sport to the gladiator fights in Ancient Rome. And if you don't get sent on a stretcher during a game, you will at one of the more frequent practices. Teaching hockey is also dangerous. Or, if you rely on statistics - 80,000 serious injuries per year. Congratulations to the winners!

2. Rock climbing

It is obvious that rock climbing is a dangerous sport. There are many reasons, the difficulty stems from the fact that the forces must be distributed perfectly - in addition to going up, you must be able to go down. Many amateurs make the mistake of going all out on the climb, forgetting that the descent is just as dangerous. The specificity of sports is that with any serious injury it brings you closer to a hospital bed and even death. Health care comes slowly and with difficulty, and she cannot always help.

In addition, after severe fractures and open wounds, there is a risk of hypothermia, heart failure and blocked tendons and joints. Suffice it to say that rock climbing is classified as a level 5 sport. For reference: the highest level 6 danger is fighting with a combat knife and archery, “blind”.

1. Diving in underwater caves

Within a year, more than 8,000 people remain disabled for life. The potential damage to the heart, brain and lungs is often fatal. 100 meters underwater, in a dark cave, problems with equipment and any mistakes or difficulties push you closer to death. Not to mention the danger of the creatures that live in these caves.

Modern society cannot do without computer technology. Computer science teaches us how to use a computer. Interesting Facts Not everyone knows about it. Computer science arose much earlier than we thought. In importance, this science is no less necessary than mathematics. You need to know interesting facts about computer science, because you cannot do without it in modern times.

1. Interesting facts from the world of computer science confirm that they first started talking about this science in 1957.

2. At first, computer science was the name given to only the technical field that automatically processes information using a computer.

3. The first electronic computer in the USSR was registered in 1948 and it was created by Rameev Bashir Iskandarovich.

5. The electronic computer was created over the course of six months, and the logical circuits in it were created on semiconductors.

6.In the 60s, the prototype of the Internet ARPANET appeared.

8.Users post about 3 billion photos monthly on Facebook.

9. In the entire history of computer science, it was possible to identify the most destructive virus - LoveLetter.

10. The largest and first computer attack was the one called the “Morris Worm”. It caused approximately $96 million in damage.

11.The term “computer science” was introduced by Karl Steinbuch.

12.Of all the HTTP protocol errors, users most often encounter the 404 Not Found status.

13.On the first typewriters in America, the buttons were arranged in alphabetical order.

14. The computer mouse was invented by Douglas Engelbart.

15.In 1936, the word “spam” appeared.

16.The world's first programmer was a woman named Ada Lovelace. She was originally from England.

17.The founder of computer science was Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz.

18.The first creator of a computer in our state was Lebedev.

19.The Japanese supercomputer is considered the most powerful computing machine.

20.In 1990, the first network in Russia was connected to the Internet.

21.The highest award for achievements in the field of computer science is the Turing Award.

22.For the first time in 1979, emotion was transmitted using electronics. Kevin McKenzie did it.

23. Before the creation of the first computers, the word “computer” in America was used to refer to a person who performed calculations on adding machines.

24.Firsts laptop weighed 12 kilograms.

25.The first dot matrix printer was released in 1964.

26.E-mail was created in 1971.

27.The first domain registered was Symbolics.com.

28.Approximately 80% of all photographs available on the Internet are of naked representatives of the fairer sex.

29.Approximately 15 billion kW per hour is used by Google.

30.Today, approximately 1.8 billion people are connected to the Internet.

31.The largest percentage of Internet users is in Sweden.

32.Until 1995, domains were allowed to be registered for free.

33. Every 8th married couple started meeting their partner on the Internet.

34. 10 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute.

35.E-mail was introduced before the Internet was created.

36. The biggest computer network consists of 6000 computers. It operates the Large Hadron Collider.

38. Every day, a computer network is attacked by an average of 20 viruses.

39.The first speech recognition system originated in India.

40. Engineers from Denmark managed to develop a computer with which a cow can milk itself.

41.The first programming language for electronic computer— Short Code.

42.The first Internet provider in the history of computer science was called Compuserve. It was founded in 1969 and today is owned by AOL.

43. On September 19, 2005, a record was set for the number of identical queries on Google. It was on that day that millions of people used the phrase: “hurricane rita.”

44.The term “computer science” was created from two words “automation” and “information”.

45.Informatics is a practical science.

46.The first working mechanical calculator was created by Blaise Pascal.

47.Informatics as an academic discipline first began to be used in the USSR in 1985.

49. Anyone who sits at a computer for a long time blinks at least 7 times per minute.

50. Cyberphobes are people who are afraid of computers and everything connected with them.

“May you live in an era of change” is a very laconic and quite understandable curse for a person, say, over 30 years old. Modern stage development of mankind has made us unwitting witnesses of a unique “era of change”. And here it’s not just the scale of modern scientific progress that plays a role; in terms of significance for civilization, the transition from stone to copper tools was obviously much more significant than doubling the computing capabilities of the processor, which in itself will be clearly more technologically advanced. The enormous, ever-increasing speed of change in the technological development of the world is simply discouraging. If a hundred years ago every self-respecting gentleman simply had to be aware of all the “new products” in the world of science and technology, so as not to look like a fool and a hillbilly in the eyes of those around him, now, given the volume and speed of the generation of these “new products”, it is completely easy to keep track of them impossible, the question is not even posed that way. The inflation of technologies, unimaginable even until recently, and the human capabilities associated with them, have actually killed the wonderful trend in literature - “Technical Fiction”. There is no longer a need for it, the future has become many times closer than ever before; the planned story about “wonderful technology” risks reaching the reader later than something similar has already rolled off the production lines of the research institute.

The progress of human technical thought has always been most quickly reflected in the sphere information technologies. Methods of collecting, storing, systematizing, and distributing information run like a red thread through the entire history of mankind. Breakthroughs, whether in the field of technical or human sciences, one way or another, responded to IT. The civilizational path traversed by humanity is a series of successive steps to improve methods of storing and transmitting data. In this article, we will try to understand and analyze in more detail the main stages in the process of development of information carriers, and conduct a comparative analysis of them, starting from the most primitive - clay tablets, up to the latest successes in creating a machine-brain interface.

The task posed is really no joke, look what you set your mind to, the intrigued reader will say. It would seem, how is it possible, while maintaining at least basic correctness, to compare significantly different technologies of the past and today? The fact that the way people perceive information has not actually changed much can help resolve this issue. The forms of recording and forms of reading information through sounds, images and coded symbols (writing) remain the same. In many ways, it is this given fact that has become, so to speak, a common denominator, thanks to which it will be possible to make qualitative comparisons.

Methodology

To begin with, it’s worth recalling the truisms with which we will continue to operate. The elementary information carrier of a binary system is a “bit”, while minimum unit The storage and processing of data by a computer is a “byte” in standard form, the latter includes 8 bits. A megabyte, more familiar to our ears, corresponds to: 1 MB = 1024 kbytes = 1048576 bytes.

Reduced units per this moment are universal measures of the volume of digital data located on a particular medium, so they will be very easy to use in further work. The universality lies in the fact that a group of bits, actually a collection of numbers, a set of 1/0 values, can describe any material phenomenon and thereby digitize it. It doesn’t matter whether it’s the most sophisticated font, picture, melody, all these things consist of separate components, each of which is assigned its own unique digital code. Understanding this basic principle makes it possible for us to move forward.

The difficult, analog childhood of civilization

The very evolutionary development of our species threw people into the embrace of an analogue perception of the space around them, which largely predetermined the fate of our technological development.

At first glance modern man, the technologies that arose at the very dawn of humanity are very primitive; to someone who is not experienced in details, this is exactly how the very existence of humanity before the transition to the era of “digital” may seem, but is this so, was “childhood” really that difficult? Having set out to study the question posed, we can see very simple technologies for storing and processing information at the stage of their emergence. The first information carrier of its kind created by man was portable area objects with images printed on them. Tablets and parchments made it possible not only to save, but also to process this information more efficiently than ever before. At this stage, the opportunity to concentrate great amount information in specially designated places - repositories, where this information was systematized and carefully protected, became the main impetus for the development of all mankind.

The first known data centers, as we would call them now, until recently called libraries, arose in the vastness of the Middle East, between the Nile and Euphrates rivers, around the 2nd thousand years BC. All this time, the format of the information carrier itself significantly determined the ways of interaction with it. And here it is no longer so important whether it is an adobe tablet, a papyrus scroll, or a standard A4 sheet of pulp and paper; all these thousands of years have been closely united by the analogue method of entering and reading data from a medium.

The period of time during which it was the analogue way of human interaction with his information belongings that dominated successfully extended to the present day, only very recently, already in the 21st century, finally giving way to the digital format.

Having outlined the approximate time and semantic framework of the analog stage of our civilization, we can now return to the question posed at the beginning of this section: after all, these methods of data storage that we had and used until very recently, not knowing about iPads, flash drives and optical discs?

Let's do the calculation

If we put aside the last stage of the decline of analog data storage technologies, which has lasted for the last 30 years, we can sadly note that these technologies themselves, by and large, have not undergone significant changes for thousands of years. Indeed, a breakthrough in this area occurred relatively recently, this is the end of the 19th century, but more on that below. Until the middle of the declared century, among the main methods of recording data, two main ones could be distinguished: writing and painting. The significant difference between these methods of registering information, absolutely regardless of the medium on which it is carried out, lies in the logic of information registration.

art

Painting seems to be the most in a simple way transfer of data that does not require any additional knowledge, both at the stage of creation and use of data, thereby actually being the original format perceived by a person. The more accurately the transmission of reflected light from the surface of surrounding objects to the retina of the scribe’s eye occurs on the surface of the canvas, the more informative this image will be. The lack of thoroughness of the transmission technique and materials used by the image creator is the noise that will subsequently interfere with the accurate reading of the information recorded in this way.

How informative the image is, what quantitative value of information the drawing carries. At this stage of understanding the process of transmitting information graphically, we can finally plunge into the first calculations. A basic computer science course will come to our aid with this.

Any raster image discretely, this is just a set of points. Knowing this property of it, we can translate the displayed information that it carries into units that are understandable to us. Since the presence/absence of a contrast point is actually the simplest binary code 1/0, then each point acquires 1 bit of information. In turn, the image of a group of points, say 100x100, will contain:

V = K * I = 100 x 100 x 1 bit = 10,000 bits / 8 bits = 1250 bytes / 1024 = 1.22 kbytes

But let's not forget that the above calculation is correct only for a monochrome image. In the case of much more frequently used color images, naturally, the amount of transmitted information will increase significantly. If we assume that the condition for sufficient color depth is 24-bit (photographic quality) encoding, and let me remind you, it has support for 16,777,216 colors, then we get a much larger amount of data for the same number of pixels:

V = K * I = 100 x 100 x 24 bits = 240,000 bits / 8 bits = 30,000 bytes / 1024 = 29.30 kbytes

As you know, a point has no size and, in theory, any area allocated for drawing an image can be indefinitely a large number of information. In practice, there are quite certain dimensions and accordingly the volume of data can be determined.

Based on many studies, it was found that a person with average visual acuity, from a distance comfortable for reading information (30 cm), can distinguish about 188 lines per 1 centimeter, which in modern technology approximately corresponds to the standard parameter for scanning images with household scanners at 600 dpi . Therefore, from one square centimeter of a plane, without additional devices, the average person can count 188:188 points, which will be equivalent to:

For a monochrome image:
Vm = K * I = 188 x 188 x 1 bit = 35,344 bits / 8 bits = 4418 bytes / 1024 = 4.31 kbytes

For photographic quality images:
Vc = K * I = 188 x 188 x 24 bits = 848,256 bits / 8 bits = 106,032 bytes / 1024 = 103.55 kbytes

For greater clarity, based on the calculations obtained, we can easily establish how much information such a familiar A4 sheet of paper with dimensions 29.7/21 cm carries:

VA4 = L1 x L2 x Vm = 29.7 cm x 21 cm x 4.31 kbytes = 2688.15 / 1024 = 2.62 MB – monochrome picture

VA4 = L1 x L2 x Vm = 29.7 cm x 21 cm x 103.55 kb = 64584.14 / 1024 = 63.07 mb – color picture

Writing

If with the visual arts the “picture” is more or less clear, then with writing everything is not so simple. Obvious differences in the methods of transmitting information between text and drawing dictate a different approach to determining the information content of these forms. Unlike an image, writing is a type of standardized, coded transmission of data. Without knowing the code of words embedded in a letter and the letters that form them, the information load of, say, Sumerian cuneiform writing is generally zero for most of us, while ancient images on the ruins of Babylon, for example, will be quite correctly perceived even by a person absolutely ignorant of the intricacies of the ancient world . It becomes quite obvious that the information content of a text extremely depends on whose hands it fell into, on the deciphering of it specific person.

Nevertheless, even under such circumstances, which somewhat blur the validity of our approach, we can quite unambiguously calculate the amount of information that was placed in texts on various kinds of flat surfaces.
Using the already familiar binary encoding system and the standard byte, written text, which can be thought of as a set of letters that forms words and sentences, can very easily be reduced to the digital form 1 / 0.

The 8-bit byte that is familiar to us can acquire up to 256 different digital combinations, which should be enough for a digital description of any existing alphabet, as well as numbers and punctuation marks. This suggests the conclusion that any standard alphabetic character applied to the surface takes up 1 byte in digital equivalent.

The situation is a little different with hieroglyphs, which have also been widely used for several thousand years. By replacing an entire word with one character, this encoding clearly uses the space allotted to it much more effectively in terms of information load than what happens in alphabet-based languages. At the same time, the number of unique characters, each of which needs to be assigned a non-repeated combination of 1 and 0, is many times greater. In the most common existing hieroglyphic languages: Chinese and Japanese, according to statistics, no more than 50,000 unique characters are actually used, in Japanese and even less, at the moment the country’s Ministry of Education, for everyday use, identified a total of 1850 hieroglyphs. In any case, 256 combinations that fit into one byte are no longer enough. One byte is good, but two is even better, says modified folk wisdom, 65536 - this is exactly how many digital combinations we will get using two bytes, which in principle becomes sufficient to convert an actively used language into digital form, thereby assigning two bytes to the absolute majority of hieroglyphs.

The current practice of using writing tells us that about 1,800 readable, unique characters can be placed on a standard A4 sheet. By carrying out simple arithmetic calculations, you can determine how much information in digital equivalent one standard typewritten sheet of alphabetic, and more informative hieroglyphic writing will carry:

V = n * I = 1800 * 1 byte = 1800 / 1024 = 1.76 kbytes or 2.89 bytes / cm2

V = n * I = 1800 * 2 bytes = 3600 / 1024 = 3.52 kbytes or 5.78 bytes / cm2

Industrial Leap

The 19th century was a turning point for both the methods of recording and storing analog data; this was a consequence of the emergence of revolutionary materials and methods of recording information that were to change the IT world. One of the main innovations was sound recording technology.

The invention of the phonograph by Thomas Edison first gave rise to the existence of cylinders with grooves applied to them, and soon records - the first prototypes of optical disks.

Reacting to sound vibrations, the phonograph cutter tirelessly made grooves on the surface of both metal and, a little later, polymer. Depending on the captured vibration, the cutter applied a twisted groove of different depths and widths to the material, which in turn made it possible to record sound and clearly mechanically reproduce back the sound vibrations that were already engraved.

At the presentation of the first phonograph by T. Edison at the Paris Academy of Sciences, there was an embarrassment; one older linguist, having just heard the reproduction of human speech by a mechanical device, jumped out of his seat and indignantly threw his fists at the inventor, accusing him of fraud. According to this respected member of the academy, metal could never replicate the melodiousness of the human voice, and Edison himself is an ordinary ventriloquist. But you and I know that this is certainly not the case. Moreover, in the twentieth century people learned to store sound recordings in digital format, and now we will plunge into some numbers, after which it will become quite clear how much information fits on an ordinary vinyl record (the material has become the most characteristic and widespread representative of this technology) record.

Just like earlier with the image, here we will build on the human ability to capture information. It is widely known that most often the human ear is able to perceive sound vibrations from 20 to 20,000 Hertz, based on this constant, to switch to digital format sound, a value of 44100 Hertz was adopted, since for a correct transition, the sampling frequency of the sound vibration must be twice as high as its original value. Also, an important factor here is the coding depth of each of the 44,100 vibrations. This parameter directly affects the number of bits inherent in one wave; the greater the position of the sound wave recorded in a specific second of time, the more bits it must be encoded and the higher quality the digitized sound will sound. The ratio of sound parameters chosen for the most common format today, not distorted by compression used on audio discs, is its 16-bit depth, with an oscillation resolution of 44.1 kHz. Although there are more “capacious” ratios of the given parameters, up to 32bit / 192 kHz, which might be more comparable to the actual sound quality of the recording, we will include the ratio 16 bit / 44.1 kHz in the calculations. It was the chosen ratio that in the 80-90s of the twentieth century dealt a crushing blow to the analogue audio recording industry, becoming in fact a full-fledged alternative to it.

And so, taking the announced values ​​as the initial sound parameters, we can calculate the digital equivalent of the volume of analog information that recording technology carries:

V = f * I = 44100 Hertz * 16 bits = 705600 bits/sec / 8 = 8820 bytes/sec / 1024 = 86.13 kbytes/sec

By calculation, we obtained the necessary amount of information to encode 1 second of sound from a high-quality recording. Since the size of the plates varied, just like the density of the grooves on its surface, the amount of information on specific representatives of such a medium also varied significantly. The maximum time for high-quality recording on a vinyl record with a diameter of 30 cm was less than 30 minutes on one side, which was on the edge of the material’s capabilities; usually this value did not exceed 20-22 minutes. Having this characteristic, it follows that the vinyl surface could accommodate:

Vv = V * t = 86.13 kbytes/sec * 60 sec * 30 = 155034 kbytes / 1024 = 151.40 MB

But in fact, no more than:
Vvf = 86.13 kbytes/sec * 60 sec * 22 = 113691.6 kbytes / 1024 = 111.03 MB

The total area of ​​such a plate was:
S = π* r^2 = 3.14 * 15 cm * 15 cm = 706.50 cm2

In fact, there are 160.93 kbytes of information per square centimeter of a plate; naturally, the proportion for different diameters will not change linearly, since this is not the effective recording area, but the entire media.

Magnetic tape

The latest and, perhaps, the most effective carrier of data recorded and read by analogue methods is magnetic tape. Tape is actually the only medium that has survived the analog era quite successfully.

The technology for recording information using the magnetization method was patented at the end of the 19th century by the Danish physicist Voldemar Poultsen, but unfortunately, at that time it widespread did not purchase. For the first time, the technology was used on an industrial scale only in 1935 by German engineers, on its basis the first film tape recorder was created. Over the 80 years of its active use, magnetic tape has undergone significant changes. Used different materials, different geometric parameters of the tape itself, but all these improvements were based on a single principle, developed back in 1898 by Poultsen, magnetic recording of vibrations.

One of the most widely used formats was a tape consisting of a flexible base onto which one of the metal oxides (iron, chromium, cobalt) was applied. The width of the tape used in household audio tape recorders was usually one inch (2.54 cm), the thickness of the tape started from 10 microns, as for the length of the tape, it varied significantly in different skeins and most often ranged from hundreds of meters to a thousand. For example, a reel with a diameter of 30 cm could hold about 1000 m of tape.

The sound quality depended on many parameters, both the tape itself and the equipment that read it, but in general, with the right combination of these same parameters, it was possible to make high-quality studio recordings on magnetic tape. More high quality sound was achieved by using a larger volume of tape to record a unit of sound time. Naturally, the more tape is used to record the moment of sound, the wider the range of frequencies that can be transferred to the medium. For studio, high-quality materials, the recording speed onto the tape was no less than 38.1 cm/sec. When listening to recordings at home, a recording made at a speed of 19 cm/sec was sufficient for a fairly full sound. As a result, a 1000 m reel could accommodate up to 45 minutes of studio sound, or up to 90 minutes of content acceptable to the majority of consumers. In cases of technical notes or speeches for which the width frequency range during playback it did not play a special role; with a tape consumption of 1.19 cm/sec on the above-mentioned reel, it was possible to record sounds for as much as 24 hours.

Having a general understanding of magnetic tape recording technologies in the second half of the twentieth century, we can more or less correctly convert the capacity of reel-to-reel media into units of data volume that are understandable to us, as we have already done for recordings.

A square centimeter of such media will accommodate:
Vo = V / (S * n) = 86.13 kbytes/sec / (2.54 cm * 1 cm * 19) = 1.78 kbytes/cm2

Total volume of a reel with 1000 meters of film:
Vh = V * t = 86.13 kbytes/sec * 60 sec * 90 = 465102 kbytes / 1024 = 454.20 MB

Do not forget that the specific footage of the tape in the reel was very different; it depended, first of all, on the diameter of the reel itself and the thickness of the tape. Quite common, due to their acceptable dimensions, were widely used reels that could hold 500...750 meters of film, which for the average music lover was the equivalent of an hour of sound, which was quite enough to replicate an average music album.

The life of video cassettes, which used the same principle of recording an analog signal onto magnetic tape, was quite short, but no less bright. By the time of industrial use of this technology, the recording density on magnetic tape had increased dramatically. The half-inch film, 259.4 meters long, contained 180 minutes of video material of very questionable quality, as it is today. The first video recording formats produced a picture at the level of 352x288 lines, the best samples showed results at the level of 352x576 lines. In terms of bitrate, the most advanced recording playback methods made it possible to approach a value of 3060 kbit/sec, with a speed of reading information from the tape of 2.339 cm/sec. A standard three-hour cassette could hold about 1724.74 MB, which in general is not so bad, as a result, video cassettes remained in great demand until very recently.

Magic number

The emergence and widespread implementation of numbers (binary coding) is entirely due to the twentieth century. Although the very philosophy of coding with binary code 1 / 0, Yes / No, one way or another hovered among humanity in different times and on different continents, sometimes taking on the most amazing forms, it finally materialized in 1937. MIT student Claude Shannon, based on the work of the great British (Irish) mathematician Georg Boulet, applied the principles of Boulenov algebra to electrical circuits, which in fact became the starting point for cybernetics in the form in which we know it now.

In less than a hundred years, both the hardware and software components of digital technology have undergone a huge number of major changes. The same is true for storage media. Starting from ultra-inefficient paper storage media for digital data, we have come to ultra-efficient solid-state storage. In general, the second half of the last century passed under the banner of experiments and the search for new forms of media, which can be succinctly called a general mess of the format.

Card

Punch cards became, perhaps, the first step towards interaction between a computer and a person. Such communication lasted for quite a long time, sometimes even now this medium can be found in specific research institutes scattered throughout the CIS.

One of the most common punched card formats was the IBM format introduced back in 1928. This format became the basis for Soviet industry. The dimensions of such a punched card according to GOST were 18.74 x 8.25 cm. The punched card could hold no more than 80 bytes, with only 0.52 bytes per 1 cm2. In this calculation, for example, 1 Gigabyte of data would be equal to approximately 861.52 Hectares of punched cards, and the weight of one such Gigabyte would be just under 22 tons.

Magnetic tapes

In 1951, the first samples of data carriers based on the technology of pulsed magnetization of tape were released specifically for registering “digits” on it. This technology made it possible to add up to 50 characters per centimeter of a half-inch metal tape. Subsequently, the technology was seriously improved, making it possible to increase the number of single values ​​per unit area many times over, as well as to reduce the cost of the material of the carrier itself as much as possible.

At the moment, according to the latest statements by Sony Corporation, their nano developments make it possible to place a volume of information equal to 23 Gigabytes per 1 cm2. Such ratios of figures suggest that this tape magnetic recording technology has not become obsolete and has quite bright prospects for further exploitation.

Gram record

Probably the most amazing method of storing digital data, but only at first glance. The idea of ​​recording a live program onto a thin layer of vinyl arose in 1976 at Processor Technology, a company based in Kansas City, USA. The essence of the idea was to reduce the cost of the storage medium as much as possible. The company's employees took an audio tape with data recorded in the existing Kansas City Standard audio format and transferred it to vinyl. In addition to reducing the cost of the media, this solution made it possible to attach an engraved plate to a regular magazine, which made it possible to distribute small programs.

In May 1977, magazine subscribers were the first to receive a record in their issue that contained a 4K BASIC interpreter for the Motorola 6800 processor. The playing time of the record was 6 minutes.
This technology, for obvious reasons, did not catch on; officially, the last record, the so-called Floppy-Rom, was released in September 1978, this was its fifth release.

Winchesters

The first hard drive was introduced by IBM in 1956; the IBM 350 model was included with the company's first mass-produced computer. The total weight of this " hard drive"was 971 kg. It was similar in size to a closet. It contained 50 disks, the diameter of which was 61 cm. The total amount of information that could fit on this “hard drive” was a modest 3.5 megabytes.

The data recording technology itself was, so to speak, a derivative of recording and magnetic tapes. The disks placed inside the case contained many magnetic pulses, which were applied to them and read by the movable head of the recorder. Like a gramophone top, at each moment of time the recorder moved across the area of ​​each of the disks, gaining access to the required cell, which carried a magnetic vector of a certain direction.

At the moment, the above-mentioned technology is also alive and, moreover, is actively developing. Less than a year ago, Western Digital released the world's first 10 TB hard drive. There were 7 plates in the middle of the body, and instead of air, helium was pumped into the middle of it.

Optical discs

They owe their appearance to the partnership of two corporations, Sony and Philips. The optical disc was introduced in 1982 as a viable, digital alternative to analog audio media. With a diameter of 12 cm, the first samples could accommodate up to 650 MB, which, with a sound quality of 16 bits / 44.1 kHz, amounted to 74 minutes of sound, and this value was not chosen in vain. Beethoven's 9th Symphony lasts exactly 74 minutes, which was excessively loved either by one of the co-owners of Sony or by one of the developers from Philips, and now it could fit entirely on one disc.

The technology for applying and reading information is very simple. Indentations are burned into the mirror surface of the disk, which, when reading the information optically, are clearly registered as 1/0.

Optical media technology is also thriving in our 2015 year. The technology known to us as Blu-ray disc with four-layer recording holds about 111.7 Gigabytes of data on its surface, at its not too high price, being ideal media for very “capacious” films of high resolution with deep color reproduction.

Solid state drives, flash memory, SD cards

All this is the brainchild of one technology. The principle of data recording, developed back in the 1950s, is based on recording an electric charge in an isolated region of a semiconductor structure. For a long time, it did not find its practical implementation to create a full-fledged information carrier on its basis. The main reason This was due to the large dimensions of the transistors, which, with their maximum possible concentration, could not generate a competitive product in the data storage market. They remembered the technology and periodically tried to implement it throughout the 70s-80s.

The real high point for solid-state drives came in the late 80s, when semiconductor sizes began to reach acceptable sizes. In 1989, the Japanese Toshiba presented a completely new type of memory “Flash”, from the word “Flash”. This word itself very well symbolized the main pros and cons of media implemented on the principles of this technology. Unprecedented data access speed, a fairly limited number of rewrite cycles and the need for an internal power supply for some of this type of media.

To date, media manufacturers have achieved the greatest concentration of memory capacity thanks to the SDCX card standard. With dimensions of 24 x 32 x 2.1 mm, they can support up to 2 TB of data.

The cutting edge of scientific progress

All the media with which we have dealt up to this point have been from the world of non-living nature, but let’s not forget that the very first storage device of information with which we have all dealt is the human brain.

The principles of the functioning of the nervous system in general terms are already clear today. And as surprising as this may sound, the physical principles of the brain are quite comparable to the principles of organization of modern computers.
A neuron is a structural and functional unit of the nervous system; it forms our brain. A microscopic cell with a very complex structure, which is actually an analogue of the transistor we are used to. Interaction between neurons occurs due to various signals that are propagated using ions, which in turn generate electric charges, thus creating a not quite ordinary electrical circuit.

But even more interesting is the very principle of operation of the neuron, like its silicon analogue, this structure oscillates in the binary position of its state. For example, in microprocessors, the difference in voltage levels is taken as the conditional 1/0; the neuron, in turn, has a potential difference; in fact, at any given time it can acquire one or two possible values polarity: either “+” or “-”. A significant difference between a neuron and a transistor is the limiting speed of the former to acquire opposite values ​​1 / 0. The neuron, as a result of its structural organization, which we won’t go into too much detail, is thousands of times more inert than its silicon counterpart, which naturally affects its performance - the amount of request processing per unit of time.

But not everything is so sad for living beings, unlike computers where processes are carried out in a sequential mode, billions of neurons integrated into the brain solve assigned tasks in parallel, which provides a number of advantages. Millions of these low-frequency processors quite successfully make it possible, in particular for humans, to interact with the environment.

Having studied the structure of the human brain, the scientific community has come to the conclusion that in fact the brain is an integral structure, which already includes a computing processor, instant memory, and long-term memory. Due to the very neural structure of the brain, there are no clear, physical boundaries between these hardware components, only blurred specification zones. This statement is confirmed by dozens of precedents from life, when, due to certain circumstances, people had part of their brain removed, up to half of the total volume. Patients after such interventions, in addition to not turning into a “vegetable,” in some cases, over time, restored all their functions and happily lived to a ripe old age, thereby being living proof of the depth of flexibility and perfection of our brain.

Returning to the topic of the article, we can come to an interesting conclusion: the structure of the human brain is actually similar to solid state drive information discussed above. After such a comparison, keeping in mind all its simplifications, we can ask the question, how much data can be accommodated in this storage? It may be surprising again, but we can get a completely unambiguous answer, so let’s do the calculation.

As a result of scientific experiments conducted in 2009 by neuroscientist, doctor of the University of Brazil in Rio De Janeiro - Suzanne Herculano-Housell, it was found that on average human brain, weighing about one and a half kilograms, you can count approximately 86 billion neurons; let me remind you that previously scientists believed that this figure for the average value equals 100 billion neurons. Based on these numbers and equating each individual neuron to actually one bit, we get:

V = 86,000,000,000 bits / (1024 * 1024*1024) = 80.09 Gbit / 8 = 10.01 GB

Is it a lot or a little and how competitive can this information storage environment be? It’s very difficult to say yet. Every year the scientific community pleases us more and more with progress in the study of the nervous system of living organisms. You can even find references to the artificial introduction of information into the memory of mammals. But by and large, the secrets of the brain's thinking still remain a mystery to us.

Bottom line

Although the article did not present all types of data carriers, of which there are a huge variety, the most typical representatives found a place in it. Summarizing the presented material, one can clearly trace a pattern - the entire history of the development of data carriers is based on the heredity of the stages preceding the current moment. The progress of the last 25 years in the field of storage media is firmly based on the experience gained over at least the last 100...150 years, while the growth rate of storage capacity over these quarter centuries has increased exponentially, which is a unique case throughout the entire known history of mankind.

Despite the archaic nature of analog data recording that seems to us now, until the end of the twentieth century it was a completely competitive method of working with information. Album with high-quality images could contain gigabytes of the digital equivalent of data that, until the early 1990s, were simply physically impossible to place on an equally compact medium, not to mention the lack of acceptable ways to work with such data arrays.

The first sprouts of recording on optical discs and the rapid development of HDD drives in the late 1980s crushed the competition of many analog recording formats in just one decade. Although the first optical music discs did not differ qualitatively from the same vinyl records, having 74 minutes of recording versus 50-60 (double-sided recording), compactness, versatility and further development of the digital direction, as expected, finally buried the analog format for mass use.

The new era of information media, on the threshold of which we stand, can significantly affect the world in which we will find ourselves in 10...20 years. Now advanced work in bioengineering give us the opportunity to superficially understand the principles of work neural networks, manage certain processes in them. Although the potential for placing data on structures similar to the human brain is not that great, there are things that should not be forgotten. The very functioning of the nervous system is still quite mysterious, as a result of its little knowledge. The principles of placing and storing data in it, even at a first approximation, it is obvious that they operate according to slightly different laws than would be true for the analog and digital methods of information processing. Just as during the transition from the analog stage of human development to the digital, during the transition to the era of the development of biological materials, the two previous stages will serve as a foundation, a kind of catalyst for the next leap. The need to intensify the bioengineering field was obvious earlier, but only now the technological level of human civilization has risen to a level where such work can really be crowned with success. Whether this new stage in the development of IT technologies will absorb the previous stage, as we have already had the honor of observing, or will it go in parallel, is too early to predict, but the fact that it will radically change our lives is obvious.

According to archaeologists, the desire to record information appeared in humans approximately forty thousand years ago. The very first carrier was rock. This stationary data storage had a lot of advantages (reliability, resistance to damage, large capacity, high speed reading) and one drawback (labor-intensive and slow writing). Therefore, over time, more and more advanced storage media began to appear. We will not list them in detail today, but invite you to remember only the path that data warehouses have traveled over the past hundred years.

Perforated paper tape

Most early computers used paper tape wound on reels. Information was stored on it in the form of holes. Some machines, such as the Colossus Mark 1 (1944), worked with data entered via real-time tape. Later computers, such as the Manchester Mark 1 (1949), read programs from tape and loaded them into a primitive form of electronic memory for subsequent execution. Punched tape has been used to write and read data for thirty years.

Punch cards

The history of punch cards goes back to the very beginning of the 19th century, when they were used to control looms. In 1890, Herman Hollerith used a punched card to process U.S. census data. It was he who found a company (the future IBM) that used such cards in its calculating machines.

In the 1950s, IBM was already making full use of punched cards in its computers for storing and entering data, and soon other manufacturers began to use this medium. At that time, 80-column cards were common, in which a separate column was allocated for one symbol. Some may be surprised, but in 2002 IBM was still developing punch card technology. True, in the 21st century the company was interested in cards the size of a postage stamp, capable of storing up to 25 million pages of information.

Magnetic tape

With the release of the first American commercial computer, UNIVAC I (1951), the era of magnetic film began in the IT industry. The pioneer, as usual, was IBM again, and then others followed suit. Magnetic tape was wound openly onto reels and consisted of a very thin strip of plastic coated with a magnetically sensitive substance. The machines recorded and read data using special magnetic heads built into the reel drive. Magnetic tape was widely used in many computer models (especially mainframes and minicomputers) until the 1980s, when tape cartridges were invented.

The first removable disks

In 1963, IBM introduced the first hard drive with a removable disk - the IBM 1311. It was a set of interchangeable disks. Each set consisted of six disks with a diameter of 14 inches, holding up to 2 MB of information. In the 1970s, many hard drives, such as the DEC RK05, supported such disk sets, and they were especially often used by minicomputer manufacturers to sell software.

Tape cartridges

In the 1960s, computer hardware manufacturers learned to put rolls of magnetic tape into miniature plastic cartridges. They differed from their predecessors, the reels, in their long life, portability and convenience. They became most widespread in the 1970s and 1980s. Like reels, cartridges proved to be very flexible media: if there was a lot of information to be recorded, more tape simply fit into the cartridge.

Today, tape cartridges like the 800GB LTO Ultrium are used for large-scale server support, although their popularity has fallen in recent years due to the greater convenience of transferring data from hard drive to hard drive.

Printing on paper

In the 1970s, personal computers gained popularity due to their relatively low cost. However, the existing methods of storing data were unaffordable for many. One of the first PCs, MITS Altair, was supplied without storage media at all. Users were asked to enter programs using special toggle switches on the front panel. Then, at the dawn of the development of “personal computers,” users often had to literally insert sheets of paper with handwritten programs into the computer. Later, the programs began to be distributed in printed form through paper magazines.

In 1971, the first IBM floppy disk was released. It was an 8-inch flexible disk coated with a magnetic substance, placed in a plastic case. Users quickly realized that for loading data into a computer, “floppy disks” were faster, cheaper, and more compact than stacks of punched cards. In 1976, one of the creators of the first floppy disk, Alan Shugart, proposed its new format - 5.25 inches. It existed in this size until the late 1980s, until Sony's 3.5-inch floppy disks appeared.

Compact cassettes

The compact cassette was invented by Philips, which had the idea to place two small reels of magnetic film in a plastic case. It was in this format that audio recordings were made in the 1960s. HP used such cassettes in its HP 9830 desktop (1972), but at first such cassettes were not particularly popular as digital information storage media. Then, seekers of inexpensive storage media nevertheless turned their gaze towards cassettes, which, thanks to their light hand, remained in demand until the early 1980s. By the way, data on them could be loaded from a regular audio player.

ROM cartridges

A ROM cartridge is a card consisting of a read-only memory (ROM) and a connector enclosed in a hard shell. The area of ​​application of cartridges is computer games and programs. Thus, in 1976, Fairchild released a ROM cartridge for recording software for the Fairchild Channel F video console. Soon, home computers such as the Atari 800 (1979) or TI-99/4 (1979) were also adapted to use ROM cartridges. ROM cartridges were easy to use, but relatively expensive, which is why they “died.”

The Great Floppy Disk Experiments

In the 1980s, many companies tried to create an alternative to the 3.5-inch floppy disk. One such invention (pictured above in the center) can hardly be called a floppy disk even at a stretch: the ZX Microdrive cartridge consisted of a huge roll of magnetic tape, similar to an eight-track cassette. Another experimenter, Apple, created the FileWare floppy disk (right), which came with the first Apple Lisa computer - the worst device in the company's history according to Network World, as well as the 3-inch Compact Disk (below left) and the now rare 2-inch LT floppy disk -1 (top left), used exclusively in the 1989 Zenith Minisport laptop. Other experiments resulted in products that became niche and failed to replicate the success of their 5.25-inch and 3.5-inch predecessors.

Optical disc

The CD, originally used as a digital audio storage medium, owes its birth to a joint project between Sony and Philips and first appeared on the market in 1982. Digital data is stored on this plastic medium in the form of micro-grooves on its mirror surface, and the information is read using a laser head. It turned out that digital CDs are the best suited for storing computer data, and soon the same Sony and Philips finalized the new product. This is how the world learned about CD-ROMs in 1985.

Over the next 25 years, the optical disc has undergone a lot of changes, its evolutionary chain including DVD, HD-DVD and Blu-ray. A significant milestone was the introduction of CD-Recordable (CD-R) in 1988, which allowed users to burn data to disc themselves. In the late 1990s, optical disks finally became cheaper, finally relegating floppy disks to the background.

Magneto-optical media

Like compact discs, magneto-optical discs are “read” by a laser. However, unlike conventional CDs and CD-Rs, most magneto-optical media allow data to be written and erased repeatedly. This is achieved through the interaction of a magnetic process and a laser when recording data. The first magneto-optical disk was included with the NeXT computer (1988, photo below right), and its capacity was 256 MB. The most famous media of this type is the Sony MiniDisc audio disc (top center, 1992). It also had a “brother” for storing digital data, which was called MD-DATA (top left). Magneto-optical disks are still produced, but due to their low capacity and relatively high cost, they have become niche products.

Iomega and Zip Drive

Iomega made its presence felt in the storage media market in the 1980s with the release of Bernoulli Box magnetic disk cartridges with capacities ranging from 10 to 20 MB. A later interpretation of this technology was embodied in the so-called Zip media (1994), which could hold up to 100 MB of information on an inexpensive 3.5-inch disk. The format was popular due to its affordable price and good capacity, and Zip disks remained at the crest of popularity until the end of the 1990s. However, CD-Rs that had already appeared at that time could record up to 650 MB, and when their price dropped to a few cents apiece, sales of Zip disks fell catastrophically. Iomega made an attempt to save the technology and developed disks of 250 and 750 MB in size, but by that time CD-Rs had already completely conquered the market. And so Zip became history.

Floppy-disks

The first super floppy disk was released by Insight Peripherals in 1992. The 3.5-inch disk held 21 MB of information. Unlike other media, this format was compatible with earlier traditional 3.5-inch floppy drives. The secret to the high efficiency of such drives lay in the combination of a floppy disk and optics, that is, data was recorded in a magnetic environment using a laser head, which provided more accurate recording and more tracks, respectively, more space. In the late 1990s, two new formats appeared - Imation LS-120 SuperDisk (120 MB, bottom right) and Sony HiFD (150 MB, top right). The new products became serious competitors to the Iomega Zip drive, but in the end, the CD-R format won over everyone.

A mess in the world of portable media

The resounding success of the Zip Drive in the mid-1990s spawned a host of similar devices, whose manufacturers hoped to grab a piece of the market from Zip. Iomega's main competitors include SyQuest, which first fragmented its own market segment and then ruined its product line with excessive variety - SyJet, SparQ, EZFlyer and EZ135. Another serious, but “murky” rival is Castlewood Orb, which came up with a Zip-like disk with a capacity of 2.2 GB.

Finally, Iomega itself has made an attempt to supplement the Zip drive with other types of removable media - from large removable hard drives (1- and 2-GB Jaz Drive) to a miniature 40 MB Clik drive. But none reached the heights of Zip.

Flash is coming

Toshiba invented NAND flash memory in the early 1980s, but the technology only became popular a decade later, following the advent of digital cameras and PDAs. At this time, it began to be sold in various forms - from large credit cards (intended for use in early handhelds) to CompactFlash, SmartMedia, Secure Digital, Memory Stick and xD Picture Cards.

Flash memory cards are convenient, first of all, because they have no moving parts. In addition, they are economical, durable and relatively inexpensive with ever-increasing memory capacity. The first CF cards held 2 MB, but now their capacity reaches 128 GB.

Much less

The IBM/Hitachi promotional slide shows a tiny Microdrive hard drive. It appeared in 2003 and for some time won the hearts of computer users.

The iPod and other media players, which debuted in 2001, are equipped with similar devices based on a rotating disk, but manufacturers quickly became disillusioned with such a drive: it was too fragile, energy-intensive and small in volume. So this format is almost “buried”.

The Coming of USB

In 1998, the USB era began. The undeniable convenience of USB devices has made them an almost integral part of the lives of all PC users. Over the years, they decrease in physical size, but become more capacious and cheaper. Especially popular were “flash drives”, or USB thumb drives, which appeared in 2000 (from the English thumb - “thumb”), so named for their size - about the size of a human finger. Thanks to their large capacity and small size, USB drives have become perhaps the best storage media invented by mankind.

Transition to virtuality