Information carriers: types and examples

Human civilization during its existence has found many ways to record information. Every year its volumes grow exponentially. For this reason, the carriers also change. It is about this evolution that will be discussed below.

Vestiges of the past

The most ancient monuments of human activity can be considered rock paintings, which depicted animals that were the targets of hunting. The first material carriers of information were of natural origin.

A real breakthrough is the appearance of writing among the Sumerians who lived in modern Iraq and used not clay, but clay tablets that were burned after the letter. Thus, their safety significantly increased. However, the speed at which knowledge was recorded was extremely small.

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 system of nodular writing. In Russia, there was a birch bark, which archaeologists still find today.

Paper

Paper carriers carried out a revolution, the scale of which is difficult to overestimate. Despite the fact that the first analogs of cellulosic material were obtained by the Chinese in the II century, it became public only in the XIX century.

The appearance of books is connected with the paper. In the 1450s, the German inventor Johann Gutenberg invented a manual typography machine, with which he published two copies of the Bible. These events served as a starting point for a new era of mass book printing. It was thanks to him that knowledge ceased to be the destiny of the subtle stratum of mankind, and became accessible to everyone who wished.

Today's paper is newspaper, offset, coated, etc. Its choice depends on specific goals. And although the white canvas is in demand more than ever, its innovative position has already ceded.

Punch cards and punched tapes

The next impetus in its development information carriers were in the beginning of the XIX century, when the first cardboard punch cards appeared. In certain places, holes were inserted, through which data were read. Initially, the technology was used to control looms.

Interest in the novelty increased after it was used in the US for a more convenient and quick calculation of the results of the country's census in 1890. The production of cards was handled by IBM in the future, which became a pioneer of computer technologies. The heyday of technology came in the mid-20th century. It was then that the binary system of numbers began to spread , systematizing and generalizing a wide variety of data.

The first computer storage media was also a punched tape. They were made of paper and used in telegraphs. Due to its format, the tapes allow easy input and output. This made them indispensable until the advent of magnetic competitors.

Magnetic tape

No matter how good the previous external media was, they could not reproduce what was recorded. This problem was solved with the advent of a magnetic tape. It was a flexible framework, covered with several layers, on which information is recorded. As a working medium, there were various chemical elements: iron, cobalt, chromium.

Magnetic 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 their mechanical nature and were not practical. Reel tape and cassette tape recorders are widely used.

In the 50's, attempts were made to use these developments as computer storage media. Magnetic tapes were introduced into personal computers in the 80s. Their popularity as a whole was explained by such advantages. As a large capacity, comparative cheapness of production and low power consumption.

A disadvantage of tapes can be considered a shelf life. Over time, they demagnetize. In the best case, the data is saved for 40 to 50 years. Nevertheless, this did not prevent the format from becoming popular all over the world. Separately it is worth mentioning about video cassettes, which flourished at the end of the XX century. Magnetic media became the basis of a new type of television and radio broadcasting.

Hard disks

Meanwhile, the development of the industry continued. Information carriers of a large volume 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 amount of data stored did not exceed 3.5 megabytes. However, in the future the standard developed, and by 1995 the bar in 10 gigabytes was overcome. And in another 10 years Hitachi models with a capacity of 500 gigabytes were on sale.

Unlike flexible analogs, hard drives contained aluminum plates. Data is reproduced by reading heads. They do not touch the disk, but work a few nanometers away from it. One way or another, the principle of operation of hard drives is similar to the characteristics of tape recorders. The main difference lies in the physical materials used to manufacture the devices. Hard drives became the backbone of personal computers. Over time, similar models began to be produced together with drives, drives and an electronics unit.

In addition to the main memory required for data content, hard disks have a certain buffer, necessary to smooth read speeds from the device.

3.5 inch floppy disks

Simultaneously, there was a progress in the sphere of small formats. Knowledge of magnetic properties was useful when creating floppies, the data from which were read using a special disk drive. The first such analog was introduced by IBM in 1971. The density of recording on such information carriers was up to 3 megabytes. The basis of the floppy disk was a flexible disk, covered with a special layer of ferromagnets.

The main achievement - the reduction in the physical dimensions of the carrier - made this format the main one on the market for a quarter of a century. Only in the US in the 80's annually produced up to 300 million new floppy disks.

Despite a lot of advantages, the novelty also had disadvantages - sensitivity to magnetic influence and low capacity in comparison with ever increasing needs of the ordinary user of the computer.

CDs

The first generation of optical media was compact discs. Their prototype was still records. However, new external storage media was made from polycarbonate. The disk from this substance received the finest coating of metal (gold, silver, aluminum). To protect the data, it was covered with a special lacquer.

The notorious CD was developed by Sony and launched in mass production in 1982. First and foremost, the format gained frenzied popularity due to convenient sound recording. The volume of several hundred megabytes allowed us to displace vinyl record players first, and afterwards tape recorders. If the first were inferior in volume of the information, the second differed by the worst quality of a sound. In addition, the new format sent back to the past floppy disks, which not only held less data, but were not too reliable.

CDs were the cause of the revolution in the sphere of personal computers. Over time, all the industry giants (for example, Apple) switched to PC production, along with disk drives that support the CD format.

DVD and Blue-Ray

Optical information carriers of the first generation survived on Olympus data storage not for long. In 1996, a DVD appeared, which by volume was more than its ancestor six times. The new standard allowed to record video of longer duration. Under it, the film industry quickly adjusted. Films on DVD became public throughout the world. The principle of operation and coding of information in comparison with CDs remained the same.

Finally, in 2006, a new, to date, latest format for an optical data carrier was launched. The volume began to count in the hundreds of gigabytes. This ensures better sound and video recording.

Wars of formats

Over the past years, conflicts between incompatible formats of information storage have become more frequent. External carriers of different manufacturers at the next round of development of the industry are competing 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 10th years 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 the victory of the latter.

Flash Drives

Examples of storage media can not do without mentioning USB-flash drives. The first Universal Serial Bus was developed in the mid-90's. To date, there is already the third generation of this data transfer interface. The bus allows you to connect a peripheral device to the personal computer. And although this problem existed long before the advent of USB, it was solved only in the last decade.

Today each computer has a recognizable socket, with which you can connect a mobile phone, player, tablet, etc. to your computer. Fast data transfer of any format made USB a truly universal tool.

The most popular on the basis of this interface were flash drives or in popular parlance. This device has a USB-connector, microcontroller, microcircuit, quartz resonator and LED. All these details made it possible to keep in one pocket gigabytes of information. By its size, the flash drive is inferior even to floppy disks with a capacity of 3 megabytes. At times, the volume of devices where information is stored is increased. Information carriers, on the contrary, tend to be physically reduced.

The versatility of the connector allows the drives to work not only with personal computers, but also with TVs, DVD players and other devices that have USB technology. A huge advantage in comparison with optical analogs has become a lower susceptibility to external influences. Flash is not afraid of scratches and dust, which were a deadly threat to the CD.

A virtual reality

In recent years, computer storage media are losing ground to a virtual alternative. Since it is now easy to connect a PC to the Global Network, the information is stored on shared servers. Conveniences are undeniable. Now, to access their files, the user does not need physical media at all. To interact with the data at a distance, it's enough to be in the access zone of a wireless Wi-Fi connection, and so on.

In addition, this phenomenon helps to avoid misunderstandings with the failure of physical drives that are vulnerable to damage. Remote servers, communication with which is supported by the signal, will not suffer, and in case of unforeseen situations there are backup data stores.

Conclusion

Throughout history - from rock carvings to virtual bits - a person sought to make information media more spacious, more reliable and more accessible. This desire led to the fact that today we live in an era that is not without reason called the age of the information society. Progress has gone so far that now people in their daily lives simply choke on the data stream. Perhaps information carriers, the kinds of which all multiply, will radically change, according to the requirements of modern man.