[UFO Chicago] Disk Drive--50th Anniversary

[Neil Ormos H]

For the computer history buffs, here's an article
about the IBM 305 RAMAC disk drive, which will be
50 years old in September:

  <http://www.edn.com/article/CA6317063.html>

Besides the technical characteristics, the price
was remarkable: $35 000/year, on a lease.  This
would correspond to a purchase price of about
$140K in 1955 dollars, equivalent to around $960K
today.  A pretty good buck for a 4.4 MB disk
drive.

The comment in the article stating that the later
IBM 3330 disk drive had 2-MB removable packs is
wrong.  3330s had either 100- or 200-MB drives.

--Neil