“I don't know if I just got hit by freezing rain, but it hurt like hail.”
Thin-film memoryIn 1960, the first electronic computer to employ thin-film memory was announced when Sperry Rand Corporation, of St. Paul, Minn., unveiled a new computer, known as Univac 1107 [left]. Thin film magnetic memory technology was developed by Sperry Rand through government funded research. A thin film (4 millionths of an inch thick) of iron-nickel alloy was deposited on small glass plates. This provided very fast access times in the range of 0.67 microseconds, but was very expensive to produce. The Univac 1107, intended for the civilian marketplace, used thin film memory only for its 128-word general register stack. Military computers, where money was less of a concern, used larger amounts of thin film memory. |
