Magnetic drum memory
Tambor magnético (memoria de tambor)
- Date
- 1932 · confidence high
- Place
- Vienna, Austria
- Credited to
- Gustav Tauschek
- Field
- Knowledge & symbols
What it is
Tauschek invented a magnetic storage device consisting of a rotating cylinder coated with ferromagnetic material, with fixed heads reading and writing data as the surface passed by; his first prototype stored about 500,000 bits.
Drum memory was displaced by magnetic core memory in the 1950s-1960s, and hard disk drives took over its role as secondary storage in the 1970s.
What it led to
- The dominant main memory in 1950s computers
- 'Drum computers' with the CPU organised around this memory