#29: 4.5 Megabytes of Data Represented in 62,500 Punched Cards, 1955

If you thought the massive five-megabyte computer was something worth writing home about, then look what we have here for you next—tens of thousands of punch cards containing 4.5 megabytes of data. And one very stoic lady, with a bunch more data in her brain and knowing it.

The great thing about photos like this is that they remind us that the ‘data’ we consume so easily and so much actually takes up physical space. Because we’ve managed to decrease that space so drastically in our day and age, we tend to forget, but it has to be stored somewhere.