photo #5149179

How to store 4 GB of data in 1959:Punched cards in storage at a U.S. Federal records center in 1959. All the data visible here could fit on a single flash drive. NARA - https://www.archives.gov/75th/photos/1950s/20.html[dead link]"Storage of IBM record cards at the Federal records center in Alexandria, Virginia, November 1959. Between 1950 and 1966 the records centers received millions of cubic feet of records, saving the federal government more than the total spent for the entire operation of the National Archives Records Service." Note: There are about 20 rows of pallets visible, each row is 15 pallets wide, pallets are stacked two high (at least). Each pallet contains 45 boxes of punched cards. Standard card boxes contained 2000 cards. Each card held up to 80 characters, for a total of about 4.3 billion characters of data in this storage facility - about the same as a 4GB flash drive.