#2: The First Hard-Drive Computer

It’s wild to think that today’s smartphones are personal computers that we can carry around with us and hold in the palm of our hands. The capabilities of smartphones and tablets are even wilder to think about when we look at this photo of the IBM 305 RAMAC, also known as the first computer with a hard drive.

The RAMAC system, which is short for “Random Access Method of Accounting and Control,” debuted in September 1956. This early computer was extremely expensive at $10,000 per megabyte. Naturally, private corporations and the U.S. Navy were the only entities that had early access to this invention. The 305 RAMAC weighed over a ton and, surprisingly, saved a ton of space. Our modern computers would not exist without this early invention.