Human civilization during its existence has found many ways to capture information. Every year its volumes grow exponentially. For this reason, the media is also changing. It is about this evolution that will be discussed below.
Vestiges of the past
The oldest monuments of human activity can be considered cave paintings, which depicted animals that were hunting targets. The first material information carriers were of natural origin.
The appearance of writing among the Sumerians who lived in modern Iraq and used not stone, but clay tablets that were burned after the letter can be considered a real breakthrough. Thus, their safety significantly increased. However, the speed with which knowledge was recorded was extremely low.
You can also note the Egyptian papyrus, wax, skins, which first began to write in Persia. In Asia, bamboo and silk were used. The ancient Indians had a unique nodal writing system. In Russia, there was birch bark, which even today archaeologists find.
Paper
Paper media revolutionized, the scale of which is difficult to overestimate. Despite the fact that the first analogues of cellulosic material were obtained by the Chinese in the II century, it became publicly available only in the XIX century.
The appearance of books is also associated with paper. In the 1450s, the German inventor Johannes Gutenberg invented the manual printing press, with which he published two copies of the Bible. These events served as a reference point for a new era of mass printing. It was thanks to him that knowledge ceased to be the lot of a thin layer of humanity, and became available to everyone.
Today's paper can be newsprint, offset, coated, etc. Its choice depends on specific goals. And although the white canvas is in demand more than ever, it has already lost ground to its innovative position.
Punched cards and punched tapes
The next impetus in their development of information media received at the beginning of the XIX century, when the first cardboard punch cards appeared. In certain places, holes were put with which data were read. Initially, the technology was used to control looms.
Interest in the new product increased after it began to be used in the USA for more convenient and quick calculation of the census results in 1890. IBM was the pioneer of computer technology in the production of cards. The heyday of technology came in the middle of the 20th century. It was then that the binary number system began to spread , systematizing and generalizing a variety of data.
The first computer storage media were also punched tapes. They were made of paper and used in telegraphs. Due to its format, the tapes made it easy to make input and output. This made them indispensable until the appearance of magnetic competitors.
Magnetic tape
No matter how good the previous external storage media, they could not reproduce what they recorded. This problem was resolved with the advent of magnetic tape. It was a flexible foundation, covered with several layers on which information is recorded. Various chemical elements acted as a working medium: iron, cobalt, and chromium.
Magnetic storage media made a breakthrough in sound recording. It was this innovation that allowed the new technology to quickly take root in Germany in the 30s. Previous devices (phonographs, gramophones, gramophones) differed in mechanical character and were not practical. Reel-to-reel tape recorders and cassette-type tape recorders are widely used.
In the 50s, attempts were made to use the development data as computer storage media. Magnetic tapes were introduced into personal computers in the 80s. Their popularity was generally explained by such advantages. like large capacity, comparative low cost of production and low power consumption.
The disadvantage of tapes can be considered the expiration date. Over time, they are demagnetized. In the best case, data is stored for 40 to 50 years. However, this did not prevent the format from becoming popular all over the world. Separately, it is worth mentioning the video cassettes, which flourished at the end of the XX century. Magnetic information carriers have become the basis of a new type of television and radio broadcasting.
Hard disks
Meanwhile, industry development continued. High-volume information media required modernization. The first hard drives or hard drives were created in 1956 by IBM. However, they were impractical. Their size exceeded the box, and the weight was almost equal to a ton. At the same time, the volume of stored data did not exceed 3.5 megabytes. However, in the future, the standard developed, and by 1995 the 10 gigabyte bar was overcome. And after 10 years, Hitachi 500 gigabyte models appeared on sale.
Unlike flexible analogs, hard drives contained aluminum plates. Data is reproduced by reading heads. They do not touch the disk, but work at a distance of several nanometers from it. One way or another, the principle of operation of hard drives is similar to the characteristics of tape recorders. The main difference is in the physical materials used to manufacture the devices. Hard drives have become the basis of personal computers. Over time, such models began to be produced in conjunction with drives, drives and electronics.
In addition to the main memory necessary for data content, hard drives have a certain buffer necessary to smooth the read speeds from the device.
3.5 inch floppy disks
At the same time, there was a progress in the field of small formats. Knowledge of magnetic properties came in handy when creating floppy disks, data from which were read using a special drive. The first equivalent was introduced by IBM in 1971. The recording density on such information media was up to 3 megabytes. The floppy disk was covered with a special layer of ferromagnets.
The main achievement - reducing the physical size of the media - has made this format the main one on the market for a quarter century. In the USA alone, up to 300 million new floppy disks were produced annually in the 80s.
Despite the mass of advantages, the novelty also had disadvantages - sensitivity to magnetic effects and low capacity compared with the ever-increasing needs of an ordinary computer user.
Compact discs
The first generation of optical media was compact discs. Their prototype was still phonograph records. However, new external storage media were made from polycarbonate. The disk of this substance received the thinnest coating of metal (gold, silver, aluminum). To protect data, it was coated with a special varnish.
The notorious CD was developed by Sony and launched into mass production in 1982. First of all, the format gained wildly popularity due to convenient sound recording. The volume of several hundred megabytes allowed to first squeeze out vinyl players, and then tape recorders. If the former were inferior in the amount of information, the latter were distinguished by worse sound quality. In addition, the new format sent floppy disks into the past that not only contained less data, but were also not very reliable.
CDs have caused a revolution in the field of personal computers. Over time, all industry giants (such as Apple) switched to PC production along with CD-ROM drives.
DVD and Blue-Ray
The first-generation optical information media did not last long on Olympus. In 1996, a DVD appeared, which was six times larger than its ancestor. The new standard allowed recording videos of longer duration. The film industry quickly adapted to it. DVD movies have become available worldwide. The principle of operation and coding of information in comparison with CDs has remained the same.
Finally, in 2006, a new, to date, the latest format of the optical storage medium was launched. The volume began to amount to hundreds of gigabytes. This ensures the best quality recording sound and video.
Format wars
Over the past years, conflicts between incompatible information storage formats have become more frequent. External carriers of different manufacturers at the next round of industry development compete with each other for a monopoly in the format.
One of the first such examples is the conflict between the Edison phonograph and the Berliner gramophone in the 10s of the 20th century. Subsequently, similar disputes arose between compact cassettes and 8-track audio cassettes; VHS and Betamax; MP3 and AAC, etc. The last in this series was the “war” between HD DVD and Blue-Ray, which ended in victory for the latter.
Flash drives
Examples of storage media cannot do without mentioning USB flash drives. The first Universal Serial Bus was developed in the mid-90s. Today, there is already the third generation of this data transfer interface. The bus allows you to connect a peripheral device to a personal computer. And although this problem existed long before the advent of USB, it was only solved in the last decade.
Today, every computer has a recognizable socket, with which you can connect a mobile phone, player, tablet, etc. to the computer. Fast data transfer of any format has made USB a truly universal tool.
The most popular on the basis of this interface received flash drives or vernacular flash drives. Such a device has a USB-connector, a microcontroller, a microcircuit, a quartz resonator and an LED. All these details made it possible to hold gigabytes of information in one pocket. In size, the flash drive is inferior even to floppy disks, which had a capacity of 3 megabytes. At times, the volume of devices where information is stored has increased. Information carriers, by contrast, tend to physically decrease.
The versatility of the slot allows drives to work not only with personal computers, but also with televisions, DVD-players and other devices with USB technology. A huge advantage compared to optical analogs was the lower susceptibility to external influences. The flash drive is not afraid of scratches and dust, which were a mortal threat to the CD.
Virtual reality
In recent years, computer storage media are giving way to a virtual alternative. Since today it is easy to connect a PC to the World Wide Web, information is stored on shared servers. The amenities are undeniable. Now, to access their files, the user does not need physical media at all. To interact with data at a distance, it is enough to be in the access area of a wireless Wi-Fi connection, etc.
In addition, this phenomenon helps to avoid misunderstandings with the failure of physical drives vulnerable to damage. Remote servers, communication with which is supported by the signal, will not be affected, and in case of unforeseen situations there are backup data storages.
Conclusion
Throughout history, from cave paintings to virtual bits, people have sought to make information media more voluminous, reliable and accessible. This desire has led us to live in an era that is not without reason called the age of the information society. Progress has come to the point where now people in their daily lives simply choke in the data stream. Perhaps information media, the types of which are all multiplying, will radically change, according to the requirements of modern man.