The IBM 350 RAMAC Disk File, 1984
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Introduction aY 6,1955... Few could have guessed in 1955 It is only through hindsight that the International Business that the computer industry's first true dimensions of the 350 RAMAC MMachines Corporation made magnetic disk file, the IBM 350 disk file development can be an announcement that went largely RAMAC (Random Access Method of appreciated for what it was .. a unnoticed outside the computer Accounting and ControI), would one historic technological milestone. community and other technical day prove to be of worldwide circles. The company reported that a significance. team of engineers working in a small What the team of IBM engineers research and development laboratory had developed was a technology that in San Jose, California, had significantly affected information ~eloped a new magnetic disk processing in the worlds of science, storage technology. agriculture, health, education, government, finance, insurance, transportation and distribution. This technology ushered in a new era of interactive computer applications such as airline reservation systems, inventory management, automated banking, space flights, word processing and personal computing. A technology that spawned an industry ) he first 350 RAMAC disk file Removing these obstacles helped Prior to the development of became a commercially turn the promise of the computer RAMAC in the early 1950's, IBM Tavailable product on into reality and set the stage for what employed a small number of people September 4, 1956, and was a key has come to be called the at its San Jose, California, punched component of the IBM 305 RAMAC Information Age. card facility which had been system, which also included a The 350 was the first step in the established in 1943. Today IBM's central processor, card reader and evolution of many direct access General Products Division employs printer. (In its early development, the storage devices. It launched a some 15,000 people, with two major file itself was called the 305. It technology that has been improved sites in the San Jose area and a third became the 350 when the 305 and refined during the past three in Tucson, Arizona. system was announced.) decades, but never superseded. In The economic contribution of disk It is difficult to overstate the impact strictly economic terms, the 350 storage products to California's the 350' s disk technology has had launched a direct access disk economy is estimated to be upon the world in the years since its industry whose size goes far beyond approximately as great as California's announcement. disk drive hardware sales and into more famous semiconductor Making information directly the worlds of high-speed processors, industry. available for computer processing on programming and computer demand meant that no longer would services. There is no way to estimate, processors stand idle while searches for example, other hardware, were made through reels of software, and service revenues which magnetic tape or data was punched would not have been generated if into cards and sorted for processing. low-cost direct access disk devices did not exist. Even discounting such conjecture, it is sufficient to say that fIXed and flexible disk drives alone - all derivatives of the basic 350 technology -- generated an estimated $12.5 billion in sales worldwide in 1983 for the 72 manufacturers of fIXed disk drives and the 52 manufacturers of flexible disk drives. Getting Started ... he RAMAC file development one ot the areas suggested, another By July 1952, IBM's new San Jose could not have had more was data reduction. These could Research and Development Thumble beginnings. make up about 50 percent of the Laboratory was a functioning It all began with one man, Reynold new lab's work The rest was up to organization of some 30 people, B. Johnson. Johnson. many hired after only one interview, In mid-January 1952, Johnson, a One of the most remarkable working on a number of projects, former high school science teacher aspects of the 350 RAMAC with each engineer usually working from Ironwood, Michigan, who had development effort was the rapidity on more than one project at a time. been hired to help develop the IBM with which Johnson put his new Johnson set forth three guiding 805 test scoring machine, received a laboratory into full operation. principles to everyone hired, which visit in his office at the IBM Endicott, In February 1952, he: added to the vitality of the lab. They New York, development laboratory 1) signed a five-year lease on a were: from W. Wallace McDowell, then IBM vacant stuccoed cement-block • It is essential that each engineer director of engineering. McDowell building that had previously housed be familiar with the purpose, had come with an unusual offer. a printing plant at 99 Notre Dame function and environment of the The company had decided to set Avenue in San Jose; machine or machine component up a small research laboratory on 2) began to renovate the building; on which he is working to the the West Coast, and McDowell 3) placed ads recruiting engineers in degree that his work affects the wanted Johnson to head the project. area newspapers, and proper performance of the His job: to find a suitable site, do his 4) started interviewing applicants function in the ultimate own recruiting and establish a with the help of Louis D. Stevens, a environment laboratory of no more than 50 member of the Defense Calculator • It is the responsibility of every people. Design crew at Poughkeepsie, New engineer to be conversant with all The new lab was to work on York Stevens, whose assignment other projects going on in the technologies not being pursued in was first considered temporary, laboratory. the East. Non-impact printing was returned permanently in May 1952 • It is the most important as Johnson's technical assistant. assignment of every engineer in this laboratory to give assistance, in the form of consultation, experimentation or suggestions, when asked to by another engineer; and the second most important assignment is that of carrying forward the project to which he is assigned. Looking back today, it is hard to believe that within three years one of the computer industry's most important technologies would grow from the efforts of this tiny fledgling operation. Who could have thought so then? The original building that housed the IBM Research and Development Laboratory. The first unit, on the comer, was 10,000 square feet in 1952, and was enlarged to about 18,000 square feet in 1953. Identifying the Goal he project that was to lead processing, which meant that Throughout this period and to development of the expensive central processing systems continuing through the entire TRAMAC disk file was called were often idle while information was RAMAC development project, IBM "Source Recording," which was being accumulated and sorted for engineers used the tub file billing defined as encompassing "all serial processing. and inventory control operations of a processes which take alphanumeric Information stored on drums was large paper company as a " real life" data from any source and transcribe also randomly accessible and touchstone in defining and refining it in a way so that the resulting moderately fast, but the low volume requirements and specifications for document may be handled by to-density ratio of the drum the Source Recording study and for machine methods." The punched technology also made it costly. the disk memory system they card was the most widely used such From today's vantage point, one eventually developed. document at the time, and early can see that what was needed was By November 1952, the tub file work on the project focused on some form of storage device that automation altematives had been eliminating the use of cards was randomly accessible with a narrowed to two approaches. One ahogether. As the problem became greater surface-to-area volume ratio was an endless belt with master better understood, however, the much higher than drums. cards attached so that operators focus turned to minimizing or In September 1952, however, the could see the ones they wanted and eliminating the key punching task focus was on automating the so have them electrostatically copied. itself. With many shifting goals to called punched card "tub file." Tub These master cards would then be come, the journey of discovery had files had come into widespread use electrically sensed into a new begun. at that time as a method for making punched card. The other··Johnson's It is helpful to remember that in master information punched on favored approach at that time- 1952 there were only three ways of cards more readily accessible for involved a matrix of parallel vertical storing information for use by data machine processing. Essentially, the wires of one-foot length that would processing equipment: the punched tub files were very large rectangular sense a card's information and card, magnetic tape and, to a lesser trays containing master cards record it magnetically. extent, magnetic drums. arrayed in sequence by customer It was at about this time that Each of these methods had number, item number, size, color, Jacob Rabinow, of the National significant limitations. Punched cards etc. Usually, the files contained Bureau of Standards, described a and magnetic tape essentially limited several copies of each master card. Notched Disk Memory Array in the user to batch or serial In a typical operation, clerks which each disk was rotated receiving an order would search the independently. His paper was widely tubs, pick out cards containing the circulated at the San Jose lab and needed customer and item order led a shift in interest back to disks. information, and send the cards to Disks had already been considered the machine room, where the earlier and discarded because needed documents--shipping room maintaining the necessarily minute instructions, packing slips, invoices, spacing between a recording head shipping labels and bills of lading. and a disk surface (about 1/ 1,OOOth were produced.