History of Memory Storage Devices

Danger Phoenix · 26 Feb 2007 at 16:42

I am doing my 3rd Year Project (dissertation) on The History of Memory Storage Devices, and was wondering what people consider to be the most significant breakthrough.

It would be greatly appreciated if you could look through the following list I have found online, and post which you think is the most important and a short reason why:

http://cs-exhibitions.uni-klu.ac.at/index.php?id=187

On a related topic, when a lot of people are asking about the most significant breakthrough, they assume it is the hard disk because they have one in their computer - does anyone know of an article/website etc which has some facts and figures on how little people know on the history of computers etc?

Danger Phoenix · 26 Feb 2007 at 16:59

Psyk said:
What subject do you do? It seems a bit of an odd thing to do a dissertation on for a computer science degree, unless this is only background research for it. And it seems overly technical for something like a History degree.

I do Computer Science, and this is a research based project...

Danger Phoenix · 26 Feb 2007 at 17:00

blighter said:
maybe get a don to make a poll?

I think there are too many options, and also I would not be able to get the reason with each vote

Danger Phoenix · 26 Feb 2007 at 22:18

Psyk said:
It seems a bit odd to research into the history of storage devices though. I would expect something a bit more, well, useful. I'm assuming there's more to it than that and this is just some sort of preliminary research.

I am basically researching all the memory storage devices from cavepaintings to the latest breakthrough... looking at the great minds behind them, how they work and how they have affected social, economical and environmental factors.

Cheers to everyone for replying to this post

Danger Phoenix · 26 Feb 2007 at 22:51

Vanilla said:
Actually, some advice. Why do such a dry subject for your final year project? You don't do history do you? Do you have time to change or are you too far in?

The history of data storage is so......done. I'm sure there are a million similar projects past and present and they're just as boring as each other.

Do something original, something cutting edge. They don't teach you new languages and theory so you can sit back and turn a 1st year grade essay into a third year project.

Now, not to give criticism without advice.

Do the current trend and future of data storage.

Storage Area Networks. What are they, who uses them, why.
Network attached Storage. What is it, who uses it, why.
Content Addressable storage. WHAT! Wassat? (archiving, read about it! - why do people archive? Did you read about Merill Lynch being fined millions for not being able to retrieve some emails?)
Grid storage
What cool things can you do with all of the above

The future - Storage virtualisation, why?

Show them you can think of the future, what people are doing now. Not [put's on Boring Norman's voice]The History of Storage zzzzzz.

If you are going to carry on as you are look up the IBM Millipede project, talk about solid state a bit more too.

Unfortunately it is too late to change the title... although thanks a million for the suggestions. I was going to think about the future, but didn't know what to talk about - you have mentioned some great points