Did it have hydraulic positioners like the old CDC 3300 drives?
On Wed, Jun 10, 2026 at 6:29 PM Paul Koning via cctalk <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > On Jun 10, 2026, at 7:32 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk <[email protected]> > > wrote: > > > > Didn't show up on the list, so re-sending it: > > > > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > > Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2026 12:14:39 -0700 (PDT) > > From: Fred Cisin <[email protected]> > > Subject: [cctalk] Ramac : The real first disk drive? (Was: Floppy disk > > > > The first known and recognized disk drive of ANY type (hard disk preceded > > floppy) was the Ramac, 70 years ago, 1956 > > > > https://www.computerhistory.org/storageengine/first-commercial-hard-disk-drive-shipped/ > > > > First one shipped was to Crown-Zellerbach Paper Company > > > > CHM says June; > > > > EDN and Google AI (Gemini) say September 13, 1956 > > https://www.edn.com/ibm-intros-1st-computer-disk-storage-unit-september-13-1956/ > > > > But, Gemini seems to also hallucinate RAMAC as being a company! > > "At the 1958 Worlds Fair, RAMAC showcased its revolutionary random-access > > capabilities by answering world history questions in 10 different > > languages." > > (There was no Ramac Company exhibiting at the 1958 Worlds Fair) > > > > Ramac had fifty 2 foot diameter double sided platters, and could hold a > > total of about 5MB. Modern drives can have even higher density! > > I have a crashed Ramac platter, that I have made into a patio table, with > > the platter under glass. > > "Higher density" indeed. One of the first hard drives I used was 128 kB (DEC > RC11/RS64). > > One peculiar aspect of the RAMAC is that it only had one head, or one pair, > so track switching was a lot slower than cylinder switching: it had to > retract all the way, then move the head vertically to the correct track, then > seek in again to the right cylinder. > > paul >
