Addendum: Before anyone attempts to go back further in history:
Some folks claim that the width of the punch card (or perhaps its length) was originally based upon the width of the track made by a Roman chariot's wheels and its peculiar rectangular indentations in Roman roads of 2000 years ago.
Nonsense! As with the claim that the size of the Saturn-1 rocket booster is based upon the Roman road, this is just another urban legend. ;-)
Disk drives become common in the mid '60s with the release of IBM's 360 set of computers and operating systems. A welcome relief for someone trying to compile a COBOL program on a Remington-Rand Univac-II with 4K of RAM and 12 big magnetic tape drives.
You shoulda seen all those tapes in action as a small COBOL program was being compiled. It usually took 1 to 2 hours (run overnight naturally)
(mutter mutter... curse you, Grace Hopper...!)
Authored Comments
Addendum: Before anyone attempts to go back further in history:
Some folks claim that the width of the punch card (or perhaps its length) was originally based upon the width of the track made by a Roman chariot's wheels and its peculiar rectangular indentations in Roman roads of 2000 years ago.
Nonsense! As with the claim that the size of the Saturn-1 rocket booster is based upon the Roman road, this is just another urban legend. ;-)
Disk drives become common in the mid '60s with the release of IBM's 360 set of computers and operating systems. A welcome relief for someone trying to compile a COBOL program on a Remington-Rand Univac-II with 4K of RAM and 12 big magnetic tape drives.
You shoulda seen all those tapes in action as a small COBOL program was being compiled. It usually took 1 to 2 hours (run overnight naturally)
(mutter mutter... curse you, Grace Hopper...!)
** and yes, that was 4 K ! Not 4 MB.