Two billion of anything is a lot. But Seagate just announced that since 1980 the company has shipped two billion hard drives. The Seagate press release included an infographic showing the development of computer and digital -related technology since 1979, the year Seagate, then called Shugart was formed.
For readers under 40 years of age, 1979 also is the year Sony introduced the Walkman. BTW, it was and analog, cassette based portable entertainment system. Think of it as an early MP3 or iPod. It held 90-minutes of music and was considered a real innovation for its day. Even so, it was likely the last really popular analog consumer entertainment device. From this point forward, digital was the keyword.
I still fondly remember my first computer. It was a Radio Shack TRS-80 with a whopping 16KB of memory. Yes, that’s 16 Kilobytes. In 1978 I paid $1000 for that computer. According to the website TRS-80.org, last August 3, 2012 was the 35th anniversary of the introduction of the Radio Shack TRS‑80 microcomputer System.
One year later I became really high tech, replacing my analog audio cassette data storage with a 5MB Seagate drive. I remember thinking, there’s no way I’d ever need that much storage.
I probably shouldn’t confess this, but I still have that TRS-80 computer and all of it’s accessories.
What pieces of technology help frame your own personal history? Share your thoughts in the box below.
