I'd probably start with the US Commerce Department. In their industrial report summaries, the product code is "36950 11"
e.g.: https://tinyurl.com/y8ks3mdd for 1987-88 I don't know if the information exists on a worldwide basis. --Chuck On 08/06/2018 10:24 AM, Shoppa, Tim via cctalk wrote: > Bitsavers has preserved a couple of key marketing studies that help me > understand the wide world of disk storage in the 70's and 80's. For example > http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/competitiveAnalysis/Engineering_Strategy_Review_Mar82.pdf > has numbers both for DEC and world disk market. DEC sales were a substantial > chunk of the world market of disk sales and the document seems to understand > the up and coming world of small disks while also having good numbers on the > mainframe disk world. > > I wonder if we have any documentation (probably internal numbers but maybe > also including guessing at competition) of, say, reels of half inch magtape > sales sold in the past. Chances are this would be a 3M or competitor's > document since the bulk of magtape media sales were not normally done through > DEC or IBM etc. > > For example I might guess that by the 1980's there were 5 reels of 2400foot > half inch magtape for every person in America and tapes were reused up to 10 > years. That would imply that 100 million reels of tape were sold a year. But > that's just a guess and maybe I'm off by an order of magnitude one way or the > other. > > So if you know of any documents to help me get a comprehension of the scale > of computer tape manufacturing in the 1970's and 1980's, please let me know! > It might be a 3M press release bragging about opening a new plant and what > it's capable of, for example. > > Tim N3QE > -- --Chuck Sent from my digital computer
