Andrew's Digital Domain

1956  IBM's 305 RAMAC (Random Access Method of Accounting and Control) hard disk - composed of 50 24-inch discs, stacked together and taking up 16 sq ft of real estate. The once-cutting-edge monstrosity was capable of commanding an annual fee of $35,000 and stored up to 5MB of data: Now, let's compare it to one of the contemporary storage options (averagely sized and priced) - Kingston Digital DataTraveler flash drive: Size - 2.2 x 0.4 x 0.7 inches; weight - 5.6 ounces; capacity 16GB; price - $17.00. So, based on these examples and by my rough estimates in the last 55 years the storage went down in physical size by over 46,000 times and in price by over 2,000 times; while storage capacity went up by about 35,000 times. Of course, this is not exactly comparing oranges to oranges, but I am sure you get the picture.