Vintage Computer Chip Collectibles, Memorabilia & Jewelry

 


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Computer Memory Technology Timeline

 1950s                         1960s                            1970s                       1980s                        1990s       
core magnetic memory
Core Memory
Rod computer memory
Rod Memory
twistor Memory
Twistor Memory
SRAM chip
SRAM Memory
DRAM chip
DRAM Memory
EPROM chip
EPROM
bubble magnetic memory
Bubble Memory
flash memory chip chip
Flash Memory




The History of Computer Memory

image of a RCA core memory
RCA Magnetic Core Memory Ad (1964)

Early computers in the 1940's used electro-mechanical relays, vacuum tubes, mercury delay line technology, or cathode ray tubes to store data in memory. But the memory would be lost if power was taken away, a type of memory known as "Volatile" memory. These early technologies were also very slow and were quite limited in the amount of data they could store.

Efforts began in the late 1940's to find a way to create "non-volatile" memory. Jay Forrester, Jan A. Rajchman and An Wang would be credited with the development of magnetic core memory, which would allow for recall of memory after power loss. Magnetic core memory would become the dominant form of memory until the development of semiconductor based memory (SRAM, DRAM) in the late 1960's.


In the late 1960's Bell Labs experimented with a new form of magnetic memory know as Twistor Memory in it's ESS Telephone switching computers.

Also during the 1960's, NCR Computer created their own unique version of magnetic memory technology called "Rod Memory" that was used in their business computers, competing with Magentic Core Memory technology.


By 1970, Transistor based RAM (both SRAM & DRAM) & ROM memory on Integrated Circuits became the industry standard in computer memory. This new technology offered a much smaller component size and cheaper cost than the earlier core memory. Non-volatile Read-only memory (ROM) was now able to store program code.  Volatile Random-access memory (RAM) was able to store data.

A few companies, including Intel, Western Electric, Texas Instruments, Hitachi & Sharp, produced a promising new form of thin-film, non-volatile computer memory in the 1970's known as Bubble memory.

Other types of non-volatile memory including erasable programmable read only memory (EPROM) in the 1970's, and electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM or Flash ROM) in the 1980's. These types of memory can be erased and reprogrammed, but it was a slow process.

Flash memory was created in the 1980's and works like the earlier EEPROMs, allowing non-volatile re-programmable storage, but also allows data to be erased and reprogrammed thousands of times and at very high speeds.







History of Memory Technology used in Early Computers

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      Year             Memory Technology                        Computers                                              

  • 1939-42         Regenerative Capacitor (Drum)       Atanasoff–Berry Computer
  • 1940-50         Mechanical                                       Zuse Machines
  • 1941-44         Magnetic Latching Relay                  Harvard Mark Series
  • 1945-47         Thermal                                            Not Implemented
  • 1946-53         Mercury Delay Line                   EDSAC, EDVAC, UNIVAC I, LEO I, Pilot ACE, SEAC
  • 1940s-53       Electrostatic (Vacuum Tube)            ENIAC, MIT Whirlwind I, IBM 701 / 706, IAS
  • 1947-50s       Rotating Magnetic (Drum)                ARC, IAS, IBM 650, Ferranti Mark I
  • 1949-60s       Static Magnetic (Ferrite Core)    MIT Whirlwind, IBM 405 / 704 / 705 / 7090, RCA 501
  • 1964-69         Rod Magnetic   (Thin Film)               NCR 315, NCR Century 100
  • 1968-70s       Twistor Magnetic                              Bell Telephone Switching ESS
  • 1970-80s       Bubble Magnetic (Thin Film)            Bell System ESS, Sharp PC 5000,
                                                                                      GRiD Compass 1101, 
                                                                                      Konami Arcade Bubble System
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Some Memorabilia with Computer Memory

RCA vintage 501 computer transistor
AMD ram chip vintage
intel dram memory chip
Micron memory chip IC
nmb memory chip
NCR computer Technology
intel eproms vintage
Intel flash memory chip IC
integrated circuits arizona
vintage intel eprom chip
early ibm computer transistor
Western Electric Semiconductor
Intel chip memorabilia
AMD SRAM memory chip
Intel eprom chip vintage
Ramtron RAM memory chips




Silicon Wafers > Computer Memory > Magnetic Storage > MEMS Devices

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