IBM ships the first hard drive 350 RAMAC

The IBM 350 RAMAC disk storage unit

 



 

The primary disc drive, was declared by IBM as a part of the IBM 305 RAMAC ADP system on September thirteen, 1956.

at the same time a really similar product, the IBM 355 was declared for the IBM 650 RAMAC ADP system. RAMAC stood for "Random Access methodology of Accounting and management.

" the primary engineering example 350 disk storage shipped to Zellerbach in June 1956;  but, production cargo declared to start "mid-1957"  might not have occurred till as late as Jan 1958.

The Style

Its style was driven by the necessity for real time accounting in business. The 350 hold on five million 6-bit characters (3.75 MB).  it's fifty 24-inch (610 mm) diameter disks with one hundred recording surfaces. every surface has one hundred tracks.

The disks spun at 1200 rev. information transfer rate was eight,800 characters per second. AN access mechanism affected a try of heads up and right down to choose a disk try (one down surface and one up surface) and in and bent choose a recording track of a surface try.

many improved models were further within the Fifties. The IBM RAMAC 305 system with 350 disk storage hired for $3,200 per month. The 350 was formally withdrawn in 1969.

The U.S. Patent

U.S. Patent 3,503,060 from the RAMAC program is mostly thought of to be the elemental patent for disk drives.This first-ever disc drive was at the start off by the IBM Board of administrators owing to its threat to the IBM Hollerith card business however the IBM San Jose laboratory continued development till the project was approved by IBM's president.

The 350's cupboard was sixty inches (152 cm) long, sixty eight inches (172 cm) high and twenty nine inches (74 cm) wide.

The RAMAC unit weighs concerning one ton, should be affected around with forklifts, and was ofttimes transported via massive merchandise airplanes.

In step with Currie Munce, analysis vice chairman for Hitachi international Storage Technologies (which noninheritable IBM's storage business), the storage capability of the drive might are inflated on the far side 5 million characters, however IBM's selling department at that point was against a bigger capability drive, as a result of they did not savvy to sell a product with a lot of storage. None-the-less double capability versions of the 350 were announced  in Jan 1959 and shipped later an equivalent year.

World Historic Landmark

In 1984, the RAMAC 350 computer file was selected a world Historic Landmark by The yankee Society of Mechanical Engineers. In 2002, the disc Heritage Center began restoration of AN IBM 350 RAMAC together with metropolis University. In 2005, the RAMAC restoration project resettled to the pc History repository in Mountain read, American state and is currently incontestable to the general public within the museum's Revolution exhibition.