There was a time, in TV and movie history, when if you needed to show a really powerful computer, then it needed lots of big cabinets with big spinning tapes – for example have a look at the image above from the 1964 film Dr Strangelove or the example below from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971):
The first really practical mass data storage tapes and drives were developed and announced by IBM in 1952. What you probably did not know, was that the real tape drives – not the movie props – relied on a vacuum to allow the tapes to stop and start in a split second – this was IBM’s innovation and improved the usability of this tape storage.
1952 | IBM 726 dual tape drive | Computer History Museum
I have written about magnetic tape computer data storage before:
If you want to see inside this type of tape drive, here is a video that appeared in my YouTube feed on the 2nd June – a couple of days after I had written this blog, (I scheduled it for publication on the 3rd)! It is not a 726 but a 729, but close enough for a coincidence.
Clive Catton MSc (Cyber Security) – by-line and other articles
