This monstrous floppy disk was considered an impressive technological achievement — at least when it was introduced in 1966.
It weighed 2.9 kilograms, measured 14 inches in diameter, and could store 2 MB of data.
If you're holding an average smartphone right now with 256 GB of storage, you could fit on it the equivalent of 131,072 such disks — which would have weighed just over 380 tons.
It was developed as a prototype to expand the storage of the UNIVAC 1004–1005 computers, which were popular at the time; the latter was also the first computer in history to enter military service.
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Will a smartphone 60 years from now be able to hold the equivalent of 131,072 of today's smartphones?
Probably not.
The dimensions of a modern transistor are rapidly approaching 1 nanometer, and below that size the quirks of quantum mechanics are expected to render transistors unusable.
But in an era increasingly built on cloud computing and high-speed internet, we likely won't need it to.