The very first tool for storing information. History of data storage

Information has always existed, and we know so much about the past centuries precisely because people have learned to save and transmit it.

Initially, people transmitted information from mouth to mouth, constantly changing it involuntarily. But later at the disposal of mankind there were such opportunities as drawing and writing. What can I say about the current high technologies that can store terabytes of information.

And yet the very first tool for storing information is the human hand in the literal sense of the word. It all began with rock art.

How it all began

Since primitive times, people have begun to record events. The beginning can be called a period of time from 40 to 10 thousand years before our era. On the walls of caves and rocks, people depicted animals, various household scenes, instruments with which they lived and hunted.

Today it is difficult to say whether people deliberately wrote down history then, or simply decorated the walls of their dwellings with drawings. Nevertheless, it is thanks to this that scientists learned a lot about life in those centuries, and accordingly, we also learned.

Cuneiform

A little later, in the 7th century BC, a new way of recording information - cuneiform writing - appeared. Special clay tablets were made, and while they were still damp, inscriptions and drawings were made on them. Then, to immortalize them, the plates were burned in ovens.

These methods began to come up because human memory is unreliable. To store information in a pristine, undistorted form, they decided to use this method and created a special room for these tablets. The first libraries were filled with such clay tablets. For example, in the library of Ashurbanipal (Nineveh) there were about 30,000 different tablets.

In ancient Rome, around the same time used a similar method - wooden plates covered with colored wax and then a sharp object (stylus) scribes applied information.

Predecessors of paper

In ancient Egypt, around the 3rd millennium BC, they learned how to make papyrus. Later, this technology spread to the entire Mediterranean.

For the production of papyrus plants of the family Osokovye were used. The inscriptions were written using a special pen. It was the very first tool for storing information, more precisely, its application to the medium, which is still used today.

In the 2nd century BC there was another analogue of paper - parchment. Gradually, he was recognized as more reliable and pushed out the papyrus from everyday life. For the first time it began to be manufactured in the city of Pergam, from where the name of the invention came. Parchment is an uncultivated skin of animals (sheep, cows or goats).

By that time, ink was washed up with water, and if they were applied to parchment, they could be removed and new inscriptions applied. Also the advantage of parchment was the ability to record on both sides.

First paper

According to historical facts, the first paper appeared in China during the 2nd-1st century BC. The technology was spread by the Arabs and only in the 8th-9th century AD, before that it was kept in the strictest secrecy.

Another interesting way of storing information is birch bark (this is the top layer of birch bark). It was widely used, because in Russia paper appeared only in the 16th century.

The first industrial technologies

The very first tool of information storage in the era of development of the world industrial economy is a punch card.

In 1804, Joseph Marie Jacquard came up with punch cards that he used for his loom to set a complex pattern on the fabrics. But Herman Hollerith invented them as a storage device , who first proposed to record the data of the US population census in 1890 on them.

Later, this method was modified into punched tapes, which were used to send telegrams.

Magnetic nature of carriers

In the 50's of the 20th century a magnetic tape appeared for the first computers. Then came the tapes, on which music was recorded. This technology quickly spread all over the world.

Approximately at the same time, a magnetic disk was already invented. The development belongs to IBM.

In 1969, a floppy disk appeared .

Technologies used to date

The hard disk of the computer was developed in 1956. And this is the very first tool of information storage, which is used even today. Of course, its appearance was significantly different from what we know today. Nevertheless, the technology is still actively used and continues to develop, having long been spread throughout the globe.

Also, there are portable and removable media, such as CD and DVD discs, USB-Flash-drives.

Even more new technologies - cloud storage, which are created in the Internet. Now, any of your information will be accessible to you from any point, there is no need to have anything with you except for a PC or a smartphone.

The history of information storage includes many other methods that were found ineffective and forgotten.

Information in each of us

Our body also stores information. This is called DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid). It is DNA that is responsible for the storage of hereditary information in our body, as well as the transfer and implementation of the program for the development of living cells. And DNA is not only in humans, but also in plants, animals and any living organisms.